Rating: 4/5
Genre: Paranormal, YA
First published: 2012
Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Synopsis: Every year, Blue accompanies her psychic mother to the “corpse road”, a line where one night a year, the spirits of the soon-to-be dead walk by. She is used to hearing her mother ask the names of people only she can see, but what she doesn’t expect is to see one of them herself.
His name is Gansey, one of the rich students of Aglionby Accademy, also known as Raven Boys. Blue has a strict policy of staying away from Raven Boys, but she finds herself inexplicably drawn to Gansey and his friends.
Blue has always been told that if she kisses her true love he will die. It never really concerned her before, but as she is drawn into the boys’ strange quest, she begins to wonder if she hasn’t been wrong.
This was a strange book. The synopsis was quite misleading, it was really not what I expected. I expected it to be high fantasy for some reason. I tried to summarize it as best I could, but I haven’t done a particularly good job either. It’s a hard book to summarize because there is a LOT going on in it.
It had a pretty slow start and it was very confusing for the most part. It was very vague. Everything was vague. I don’t really know how to explain the vagueness of it. When something was explained, it didn’t really clear anything up. Sort of like talking to a psychic. I don’t know whether that was intentional or not but it seemed to fit the story well. Still, it was a bit frustrating.
Paranormal is not really my favourite genre when it comes to books, but this is hands down the best paranormal I’ve ever read. Despite the vagueness and the confusion, it made me very curious and I remained engaged with the story throughout. I think its main fault was that there was so much introduced at once, so many threads that were left hanging. Something would be hinted at, but then dropped. I’m sure those things are addressed in the following books, but they made this book much more difficult to read and enjoy.
I liked the characters a lot. They were all quirky in their own way and sometimes they were absurd and ridiculous which added a lot of humour to the book. And I liked that they were all unique and had very individual personalities. Sometimes, it feels like you’re reading about the same character only with different names and descriptions, but this wasn’t a problem in this book. You could clearly tell who was talking without being told, just by the way they said it and they behaved.
I liked the mythology of it. It was really cool. Usually, I get bored with the mythology in paranormal, but this was cool and interesting and unlike what I’ve encountered before. I look forward to reading the other ones, because if nothing else, this book managed to make me really curious.
A Book Nerd 
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