The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

Re-reading The Raven Boys after having had my heart obliterated by Mister Impossible, well, it made me rather emotional. It’s almost ridiculous just how much I love this series and this first instalment. Reading it for the third time makes me all the more aware of just how talented a storyteller Maggie Stiefvater is. She’s a wordsmith and I will be forever in awe of her work.

The opening chapter may give you the impression that this is yet another YA romance novel about a cursed girl doomed to kill her true love….but it’s anything but. Stiefvater playfully pokes fun at Blue, one of our lead characters and the girl in question. She points out early on that she makes an effort to look quirky and weird and that she wants to be special and interesting…which is understandable given that she was right in an eccentric all-female household of fortune-tellers. Blue becomes entangled with a group of ‘raven boys’, who attended a private school and except for Adam, are loaded. One of them, Gansey, is on a quest to find a sleeping Welsh king that may be buried in their little town of Henrietta. The narrative switches between Blue, Gansey, and Adam’s perspectives, with the occasional chapter from someone who may pose a threat to our ‘Gangsey’.
There are tarot readings, visions, magical forests, Welsh mythology, ghosts, and plenty of magic. The setting of Henrietta is vivid and is central to the narrative’s ongoing mysteries and happenings, and the academia vibes and commentary on class and privilege add even more depth to the story and characters.

The dynamic between the characters is one of the most engrossing aspects of this novel. Rather than presenting her readers with ‘heroes and heroines’, paragons of beauty and virtue, Stiefvater’s characters, regardless of their role, are nuanced and messy. The raven boys and Blue can be insecure about themselves, each other, and their future. Their friendship is an intense one, and things are never easy between them. They frequently piss each other off (Ronan, my boy, excels at that), or, in trying to do ‘good’, end up hurting the other person (Gansey). While they each have their distinctive personality, Stiefvater never reveals too much about her characters, so that they always retain a certain ambiguity, an enticing air of mystery. Depending on what character we are following, well, we are getting their ‘view’ of things and other people so things tend to be skewed. This unreliability adds to the already intriguing mystery and makes the characters and their relationship to each other puzzles of sorts. We have Blue and Gansey, both of whom are full of want. Blue works really hard at appearing as this quirky ‘weirdo’ but in reality, much to her own annoyance, she’s an incredibly sensible person. Gansey is acting most of the time. Or at least, he plays the golden boy ‘Gansey’ that people seem to like, so he’s polite and charming, always keeping up this good front when all the while he’s just bottling up so many emotions. Adam, my unknowable boy, is painfully aware of his differences. He hates the idea of owing favours to anyone and resents Gansey and other raven boys for how blind they are to their own wealth. Meanwhile, he works three part-time jobs and lives in an abusive household. Ronan, my number one boy, is a dickhead. I love how mysterious his character is here. We don’t get his pov so we don’t really know what is going on with him but he has some of the best lines (and gets called out for behaving like a shit). Noah, the smudgy one, he’s…you know. My heart goes out to him. I adore his bond with Blue.

Stiefvater is a marvellous storyteller and her style carries a wonderful rhythm. I love the way she plays around with repetition and the way she describes her characters or how animated her scenes are (there are so many secret looks shared between the raven boys). She can be playful, giving us hints to later reveals or events, clever, in her word choices, dialogues, and descriptions, and endearingly funny.
The Raven Boys is an incredibly atmospheric book that will always have a special place in my heart. And while I have attempted to review this, words cannot truly express how much I love this series. Returning to this world and these characters, well, it feels like a homecoming.

MY RATING: ★★★★★ 5 stars
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