So far my favorite book in the Raven Cycle, Blue Lily, Lily Blue begins to bring all the loose threads of this epic tale together. I blew through it in two days, and could literally find nothing about it that I didn’t like. The characters continue to be their wonderful selves, with a focus on Adam that I really enjoyed. He begins coming into his own in this third installment, accepting his newfound powers and finally accepting that his friends have only ever wanted to help […]
More Gorgeous Prose
I have decided to take the plunge and read the whole Raven Cycle series since I haven’t done a good submersion into a series in a while. Stiefvater’s beautiful prose does not disappoint in volume 2, The Dream Thieves. I am absolutely in love with this woman’s craft. Her brilliant syntax and poetic descriptions are at times so perfect and poignant, it hurts. It literally makes me think about her book whenever I’m not reading it. I blew through this volume in about 2 days because I […]
I Think I Finally Love YA Again
In a nutshell, this book is what I had hoped The Mortal Instruments series would have been, and as you know from my review of City of Bones, I was less than happy with the cliches, teenage drama, and terrible love triangle. I’m happy to report that literally NONE of that exists in The Raven Boys. Even though the characters are all high schoolers, and they do believable high school things, this was a mature plot with mature characters. It tackled big issues in comprehensive ways, and even though there […]
A safe space for spoilers
Just throwing this out there right off the bat… this review is gonna have spoilers in it. They will be unavoidable, and the entire review is going to assume that you have also read this book, because I need a safe space to discuss the ending and what that means retroactively about the series and for my feelings in general. If you’re looking for a general sense of how much I recommend this book, I point you toward my four star rating and encourage you […]
Death doesn’t discriminate
I wish I’d written this review immediately after finishing the novel. Because I loved it. What a satisfying conclusion to a series I never imagined I’d get so damn attached to. Things are bleak for our heroes. People have died. Bad things are afoot. Cabeswater is in danger. Gansey is destined to die, and it’s surely going to break your damn heart into a billion tiny pieces. I started to get a bit panicky, honestly, that there was no way things were going to end […]
A Strong Finish
How do you solve a problem like having to write a review about the last book in a great YA series? It feels impossible. Thank god I wasn’t doing Cannonball Read when the 7th Harry Potter book came out. My review would have just been a string of “I don’t knows” and “oh my gods” and “I can’t evens.” I don’t want to summarize the book because spoilers, so maybe I’ll just talk around the plot. Stiefvater took on the Herculean task of wrapping up […]