OH MY GOODNESS. ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME???? HOW AM I EVER GOING TO MAKE IT UNTIL THE RAVEN KING COMES OUT????!?!?
These were just a few of my thoughts upon finishing up Blue Lily, Lily Blue. Now, that seems silly, as The Raven King is FINALLY OUT, but upon finishing up book three in The Raven Cycle, even with only a few weeks to go until the finish line, I really didn’t think I could make it.
Maggie Stiefvater is good at eliciting these sorts of reactions from me. Because, come on, she writes these amazing and unbelievably awesome books with these DRAMATIC with a capital D cliffhanger endings and then she laughs manically while we all run around like crazy people waiting for the next dose of our addiction to come out. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying any of that in a bad way – Please, PLEASE, Maggie, DON’T EVER STOP WRITING THESE SORTS OF BOOKS. NEVER EVER EVER.
I waited over a year to read Blue Lily, Lily Blue because I knew it was going to emotionally wreck me (I mean, I could barely speak after I finished The Dream Thieves (which is still probably my favorite of the series because RONAN duh). But I didn’t wait long enough. I should have binge-read the entire series on the eve of The Raven King’s release date so as not to be tortured by that agonizing cliffhanger.
But you, dear friend reader, will not have to wait for the last book. Which means if you haven’t already started this series, or if you just haven’t made your way to book three yet, you definitely should. Like, right now. Everything else can wait – it’s a Stiefvater novel for goodness sake. Real life is nothing compared to this.
I loved pretty much every single minuscule thing in this book.
THINGS I LOVED:
- OH MY GOSH, GUYS. Blue and Gansey. Can we just take a minute to say a collective, “Awwwww”? I don’t even think their romance could get any more tragic and lovely and adorkable (dork is definitely the right term for any relationship involving my dear Gansey – I’m pretty sure that the word “adorkable” was invented for Richard Gansey III).
- Ronan and Adam have the bromance of the century going on. Ronan is pretty much my favorite character hands down for a myriad of reasons, but I in particular love how he looks out for Adam and understands him in a way none of the other Raven Boys seem to. I love that he never has to ask Adam how he’s feeling – he just knows. It’s beyond cute, and it really shows the softer side of Ronan and Adam both. Their friendship continues to progress in this book, and it just gives me the feels, okay?
- THIS BOOK IS FREAKING TERRIFYING. Okay, so all of the books in this series have paranormal elements, loads of suspense, and intense adventures. But this one takes things to a whole new level in the SCARE department. I actually had to stop reading this to go find my husband and sit next to him so that I could continue, because my heart was racing that friggin’ hard. It’s amazing. I don’t go in for scary stuff typically (I’m a huge wuss), but Stiefvater’s brand of scary is the perfect mix of heart-racing and what-the-heck-is-about-to-happen and don’t-go-through-that-door and I loved every single second of it (even while I was not-so-silently freaking out about certain happenings). I don’t want to give away spoilers, but MAN, there are so crazy/pscyho/bump-in-the-night things going on here and they are not to be missed. Way to keep me on the edge of my seat from cover to cover, Maggie. You are a Goddess of literature.
- NEW CHARACTERS WHO ARE AWESOME AND CREEPY AND PERFECT. I love LOVED the character additions in this book. We get more of The Grey Man, who isn’t new, but I just adore him so I wanted to include him somewhere. We also get to meet his former employer and his former employer’s really cray-cray wife, who definitely added a lot to the suspense of the plot. We get to meet Gansey’s English friend, Malory, who is just as strange as you’d expect. Then there’s the super secret person I’m not going to talk about because it’s spoilery who is probably both my favorite addition to the plot and also the craziest addition.
- THERE ARE SO MANY TWISTS AND TURNS THAT I CAN’T TALK ABOUT. Because spoilers suck. But there is another Ronan Lynch family secret that is FREAKING INCREDIBLE BECAUSE MAGGIE TOTALLY MADE IT OBVIOUS AND YET DEFLECTED OUR EYES SO WE WOULDN’T SEE IT COMING. And there are some Blue-Maura secrets revealed. And then there’s PERSEPHONE. But I won’t say anything more about it. Once you’ve read the book come talk to me and we can freak out together. Thanks.
THINGS I DIDN’T LOVE:
- IT ENDS. I decidedly did NOT love that. Not one single bit. But now The Raven King is out, so I am at least appeased… for now.
Rating: 5/5 stars
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