4,0 van 5 sterren
A Paranormal High Adventure
Beoordeeld in het Verenigd Koninkrijk op 15 oktober 2017
I'm late to the bandwagon, I know.
Packed full of paranormal goings on, Celtic folklore, ley lines, cute guys and psychics, this is a book you definitely don't want to miss. Maggie Steifvater has written a wonderful tale focused on friendship, and adventure, and it is just so magical and easy to read.
We follow Blue, daughter of a psychic and amplifier for the paranormal, as she befriends the dreaded Raven boys, students at a local school for the rich and famous. Blue knows she shouldn't be near them, she's been told her entire life that if she kisses her true love then he will die, and on St Mark's Eve she sees one of them on the corpse road, which means one of two things. Either he is her true love, or she is going to kill him. And he is going to die within the year.
Meet the Raven boys; Gansey, Adam, Ronan and Noah. Gansey is obsessed with the ley lines and finding the legendary Glendower, Adam is struggling to get by, Ronan is a lost cause, and Noah is just strange. As Blue befriends them, she finds herself caught in the race to find Glendower, without giving away her dreaded fear that she's going to end up killing one of them.
I really liked this book. The characters were very 3 dimensional, and none of them particularly annoyed me in any way. Each character was their own person as well, despite the fact that 4 of them were Raven boys who we were led to believe were all rich, posh, and spoiled. Blue was a very strong character, her perspective being very singular in a book primarily told from a male point of view. She isn't from the world they're from, and she comes from a background not many people believe in, and of course there's the matter of seeing one of the boys on the corpse road. Because of this, she feels uncomfortable around the boys initially, and her hesitation also leads her to form difficult relationships with 2 of the boys. These two boys are effectively her love interests, Adam and Gansey, but she only tells Gansey she will kill her true love if she kisses him.
Gansey is the head of the group. The richest, privileged Raven boy, he is on the search for the legendary Glendower who he believes is somewhere along the ley line. In his search, he has enlisted the help of his fellow students, and is often misunderstood by the group. He has a tendency to forget his wealth can be influential as he prefers broken things and run down things as opposed to new and shiny. Gansey is perhaps one of the more complicated characters, and you can't help but love him as he is good-looking and rich, but also a complete nerd. Adam on the other hand comes from poverty, is abused, and feels like he has to earn his freedom and doesn't want to be bought. He's very loyal to Gansey and his quest, and develops feelings for Blue, and this made me sympathetic. Adam doesn't deserve half the stuff he has to put up with, but you can't help but feel that because of his situation he is a very important character to the story. His and Gansey's friendship is much like that of brothers, and they clearly couldn't do without each other, and that is something I really enjoyed. Despite fights and arguments, their friendship still remains strong, and ultimately Adam ends up sacrificing something for Gansey that just makes you feel for him.
I'd mention Rowan, but at the minute, he's just a condescending prick (something I loved) and I just know that in the next few books his character will become more and more important. Especially after his final line. And he said it so matter of factly it just made me fall in love with him.
This book was full of plot twists and for the most part they were very surprising. You didn't know what was going to happen until the minute you read it, and this kept me on my toes the entire time, hoping for more. The world was believable and in the end I really wanted Glendower to be real and to be part of the gang. Maggie's writing was very easy to read and at times I couldn't put the book down, I just wanted to carry on reading forever. I always wanted to know what was next, and never felt like I was dragging myself through the book or rolling my eyes at anything too cliche.
If you haven't picked this up yet, I highly recommend it. Especially for this sort of season. It's very spooky, and very fun to read, and I can't wait to jump into the second book. The only reason I haven't yet is because I don't want to rush the series and wish I'd taken my time with it.
Normally I like to go into things knowing roughly what the story is about, but with this I was glad I didn't know, because that was something I felt added to the mystery.
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