This first novel in a young adult series by Maggie Stiefvater creates one of my favorite main character names to date—Blue Sargent. Blue is the only non-psychic in a family of female clairvoyants, living in a small town. Though she seems to be “normal,” Blue amplifies the powers of those around her and so every year her mother takes her to an old church where they watch for the “soon to be dead” to walk by. Year after year, Blue never sees them until the start of the novel, when she sees a boy her own age come out of the darkness and says his name, “Gansey.”
Though Blue has never seen him before, she recognizes him as a “Aglionby” boy, a student at a private school in town. Students from this school are known as “Raven Boys” and Blue has made a habit of avoiding them. However, shortly after the vision at the church, Blue runs into Gansey and his friends, Adam, Rowan, and Noah, while working her job at a local diner. Before she knows it, Blue is being sucked into their world and into Gansey’s quest to discover an ancient magic.
There are secrets galore in this story but the biggest one is Blue’s knowledge (predicted by all the members of her family) that if she kisses her true love, he will die. This is a fun and nicely dark start to a series that I plan to keep reading.