Book Review: The Raven Boys

 

The Raven Boys (audiobook)
by  Maggie Stiefvater
Date Read: 4/6/14
Rating: ★ ★  ★

This really leans at a 3.5 star rating.  I’m left feeling a little perplexed at this story.  I expected the story to end with Gatsy’s death…but now I’m assuming the series will end that way.  On the one hand I was surprised because I didn’t think any sort of love story had developed.  But on the other, I kept expecting it, not thinking it was going to be a series arch. 

Overall I really enjoyed this.  We listened to it as an audiobook on our drive to and from San Diego.  It was hard to get used to the reader’s voice at first.  He was a little hard to understand at times.  But he did end up having fairly distinct voices so I knew who was talking.

The beginning was really slow to me.  The author introduced so many characters and kept breaking off to tell other’s stories that it was really hard for me to understand and get attached to any of the characters.  The plot took forever to develop, but once it did, it got very interesting.  I liked that each boy had their own traits.  Ronan was a jerk who has a past that haunts him.  Adam lived in an abusive household.  Noah was very quiet and hard to get to know.  Gansy was the privileged child who didn’t want to be treated like he was privileged. 

It also took me a while to understand the psychic abilities.  I still don’t know why Blue increases energy around her, although she’s not psychic or a witch or whatever they ended up being.  And why did there have to be so many psychic aunts or whoever they were.  There were so many characters it was hard to keep straight!  I wish Maggie had brought in a few of them at a time, instead of throwing them all at us at the beginning.

The last third of the book really picked up though.  I wasn’t quite sure what was going to happen.  The bad guy in the story wasn’t the strongest though.  You never really feared him.  You weren’t even quite sure who he was until the end.  But I did appreciate that the story ended even though there were unanswered questions.

Will I read the next book in the series?  Yes.  I am on a waiting list for the library.  Do I think this was a little over hyped?  Yes I do.  Or perhaps it’s because of the hype that I found it didn’t quite live up to my expectations.  Either way this book left me a little perplexed.  I wasn’t quite sure what happened with Adam in the end.  And the last line by Ronan left me really confused.  I wasn’t sure what he meant by that.