The Raven Boys

Hello and welcome to the first installment of a new review series I'm calling “Retrying Books That I Didn't Give A Fair Chance To In My Youth (Because I Was Influenced By The Bandwagons Of Their Time, Or Simply Because I Was A Stupid Teen).” Today's review is on Maggie Stiefvater's The Raven Boys, which I had previously DNF'ed at 30% in 2018. I decided to try this again with OwlCrate's The Nest community for their The Raven Boys read-along. It's a great community and you should check it out if you're into books!

I feel scammed. But I'm not entirely upset about it?

When I read the blurb of this book, I thought that this would be a young adult fantasy romance about a girl who can't kiss her true love, featuring plenty of angst and mutual pining galore with magic/supernatural elements. What I got? A borderline educational story about said girl, boy, and some friends of this boy going on a supernatural adventure to find some dude named Glendower and ley lines with maybe a teeny tiny smidge of romance.

And here's the thing- I liked this. Not as much as I probably would've if this book had been anything like I thought it would be, but I still enjoyed this. Now, onto the meat of the review...

To start with the characters, I found it strange how much I can relate to Blue. We almost have the same mom, they're so similar in both their actions and behaviors. I could definitely relate with her on the absent dad thing (lol) as well. My family's also super spiritual like the Sargents, so I wasn't new to the psychic elements in this book. This was definitely my favorite parts of this story.

Gansey, Ronan, Adam, and Noah reminded me way too much of the Marauders from the Harry Potter series. Their personalities and physical appearances are very similar; Gansey is like James, Ronan is like Sirius, Adam is like Remus, and Noah is like Peter (minus all the betrayal... stuff)- there's even a confusing plot twist where Noah turns out to be a ghost kinda like the plot twist were Peter turns out to be Scabbers. Hell, even Ronan has a brother he has beef with just like Sirius and Regulus. Blue isn't much like Lily outside of being Gansey's love interest, but everything else is too similar to consider as a coincidence. If you had told me this was originally written as a Marauders fanfiction, I would believe you.

All of this aside, these characters weren't very well characterized. For example, I found myself frequently wondering whether these Raven Boys were high schoolers or college-age kids because Stiefvater never made it clear within her character's actions. These characters are somewhat barebones, given a small hint of personality and prematurely pushed to the stage similar to the Thirteenth Doctor's companions from Doctor Who. It was almost as if Stiefvater was trying to be mysterious but just ended up being confusing.

Plot-wise this was very slow- not as slow as I remember when I originally DNFed this, but not as fast-paced as I usually like when I read a book. The plot was set up in the first three-ish chapters, then the story didn't really pick up until a bit over the halfway point for me. Everything between that was just filler that I managed to push through.

My main problem with this book, though, is Stiefvater's writing style. It's comparable to Holly Black and Alex Aster's writing styles (or so I've heard for the latter). For example, “April days in Henrietta were fair, tender things,” “Mornings at 300 Fox Way were fearful, jumbled things,” and “Robert Parrish was a big thing” are comparable to quotes I've seen tossed around from Lightlark- quotes that were quite the opposite of praised.

I also found the dialogue pretty confusing at times, considering the dialogue practically carried this story. One of the raven boys would say something, and another would reply with something completely confusing, complex, and/or off topic that didn't make sense. I found myself more and more confused over these scenes but trying to ignore them as I continued. I think this adds to the case of Stiefvater trying and miserably failing at being mysterious. Overall, the writing of this book is very poor quality in my opinion, but it's definitely not the worst I've seen. Though it's much worse when you realize this is far from the first book she's ever written.

In the end, this was an okay book. When reading this, if I was not bored I was confused, and vice versa. I believe I would've been less bored if this had focused more on romance than the adventure and if the pacing issues were fixed. Or maybe if it had been advertised as what it actually is, I may have entered with a different mindset and not have been so thrown off. Yet somehow this was still enjoyable overall despite feeling scammed by that description, and I do want to continue on with The Dream Thieves. 3 out of 5 stars.