The Raven Boys (Raven Boys Quartet #1) by Maggie Stiefvater

Synopsis: Blue has spent the majority of her sixteen years being told that if she kisses her true love, he will die. When Blue meets Gansey's spirit on the corpse road she knows there is only one reason why - either he is her true love or she has killed him. Determined to find out the truth, Blue becomes involved with the Raven Boys, four boys from the local private school (lead by Gansey) who are on a quest to discover Glendower - a lost ancient Welsh King who is buried somewhere along the Virginia ley line. Whoever finds him will be granted a supernatural favour. Never before has Blue felt such magic around her. But is Gansey her true love? She can't imagine a time she would feel like that, and she is adamant not to be the reason for his death. Where will fate lead them? ...

First Impressions: I'd always wanted to read a Maggie Stiefvater book, but since her Shiver trilogy had quite a lot of mixed reviews, I decided to pick this one up instead. I'm not going to lie, I had quiet a lot of trouble getting through this book. It wasn't the characters or the story which I both found extremely interesting, but I think the pacing put me off. You should definitely give this book at least 100 pages so you can get used to Maggie Stiefvater's writing style and pacing in this novel. But overall, this book was great and I loved hearing about the Welsh mythology, I thought that was a really unique idea. I am definitely going to continue on with this series.

My Rating:

3.5/5 stars. A very interesting read, but should be giving at least 100 pages to get into the plot and writing style. I will definitely be continuing the series.

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My thoughts:

I don't think I had ever read a book that talked about psychics as much as it did in this book before so I found it quite intriguing. 

I enjoyed reading about Blue's family, Calla had me cracking up several times throughout this book, but over than that, I didn't find there to be a lot of humour in this book.

I loved Gansey, Noah, Adam and Ronan and found them fun to read about. I liked the atmosphere they seemed to create around them. As we advance in the book, we start to discover that the boys aren't as perfect as they seem on the outside, what with Adam's dad beating him up, Ronan falling out with his brother, Gansey being utterly consumed into finding Glendower.

On the other side, I never really thought about Noah, and the more I think about it now, the more obvious it seems to me that he wasn't alive. We barely knew anything about him at all. So it naturally was a big surprise to me when Blue and Gansey found Noah's bones on the ley line.

About Whelk and Neeve, I never really trusted either of them from the beginning, especially Whelk who seemed particularly nasty to me. I couldn't stop flipping the pages after he nearly killed Gansey. Neeve I trusted a bit more, but then my opinions changed all at once when Blue sees her in the Garden at night. That was extremely creepy. But it turns out that she was even worse than Whelk, using him as a sacrifice at the end of the book.

The whole Glendower situation brought a whole new twist to the plot of this book, and for me pulled everything together. I wonder was he buried alive on the ley line which kept him alive, or was he buried dead on the ley line but his spirit is kept alive? I guess I shall find out when they find him, which I suspect will be at the end of the series.

One last thing, I wonder what will happen when they actually discover Glendower.  Will all five of them (Blue, Gansey, Adam, Ronan and Noah) be granted a supernatural favour or shall it only be one? Because if it's the latter, there could be a lot of problems when deciding who should receive the favour.