Title: The Dream Thieves
Series: The Raven Boys
Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Release Date: September 17, 2013
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 416

WrensReads Review:

I honestly don’t understand the hype with this series. I think Stiefvater writes beautifully to the point I want to paint her words on my wall and I want to meet her characters and her world building is out of this world… but I feel like the description is so thick that sometimes I get really lost in it. The story itself moves rather slowly; but it is kind of like a slow burn. So I am leaving this at three stars.

Her characters are so real though. Like Ronan, who is the ship to my sea, has such anger issues but he is so pure at the same time. He always wants to do well, and his history is thick with struggles and pains; but he always finds himself in a sticky situation no matter how hard he tries.

Then there is sweet, lovable Gansey. My sweet love, Gansey. He’s stinkin’ rich but doesn’t flaunt it. He actually wants to use it to help the people he loves. The whole struggle between him and Blue and Adam… it’s probably one of the hardest triangles to witness. They just break my heart.

I just don’t have a lot to say about this book. The characters are lovable, the writing is more lyrical than blunt, but the action is a little weak for me.

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Title: The Raven Boys
Series: The Raven Boys
Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Release Date: 2012
Format: Audiobook
Pages: 409

WrensReads Review:

Alright… I finally gave in and started this series.

This was such a slow burn but such a build up that this rating is not going to reflect how I feel about the rest of the series, I just know it.

I have heard so many people say that you have to get through the first book for the series to literally wow you and I am so ready for this.

This book was a great world-building book and character-growing book. You get to know the characters and you get to understand how this paranormal world works. When you have an author that uses their first book as basically a “introduction” book (example: Sarah J Maas), you know the series is going to blow you away when you get into the gruff of it.

Before diving into that, can we just gush about how beautiful the writing is? Stiefvater does such a marvelous job with forming her words into some lyrical rhythm that makes you realize it’s been four hours of reading when you only wanted to read for a half hour.

We have Psychic women who all live together. We have ghost that you don’t realize are ghosts. We have preppy school boys and outcaste girls. We have a king waiting to be awoken to grant wishes. We have legends beyond legends. We have forbidden romances. We have a kiss of death. We have enchanted forest that go against the laws of time.

I have been putting this book on the backburner for so long, and I regret it completely. The hype and the warning that the first book is just “something to get through” just made me skip over it. But I did enjoy the first book. I enjoy world-building and character-driven plots and the nervousness knowing there is so much more to this cast and plan of the book.

We have Ronan, who has a temper problem and a huge back story. The crew is always trying to get him out of trouble. We have Adam, who falls pretty hard but also has a really hard life. He isn’t as well off as his friends but he tries to play it off like it isn’t that big of a deal. We have Noah, who is pretty quiet. He ends up playing a huge part in the story though, so I don’t want to spoil that. Then we have Gansey who is loud and proud and always wanting to help. He is super well off, super driven to uncover the truth and doesn’t always see that not everyone wants the help he can provide.

Then we have our main girl, Blue. She was told that she will kill her true love with a kiss. She’s burdened with that her whole life, but doesn’t really let it affect her because it hasn’t become an issue. Until, possibly, she met the four boys above.

All of these boys are on a mission, and Blue is the key to completing it.

To those of you who are nervous about getting into this book, just dive in. I don’t believe you’ll regret it, but look out for my other reviews in this series to find out!

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