books by s.r.

Hi, hello, yes. This is the blog post in which I finish my review for The Raven Cycle series by Maggie Stiefvater. This is the blog post in which all of my flailing and fan-girling for other books will be put to shame.

The level of love I have for this series has grown bigger than I ever could have imagined. You’ll just have to bear with me. *shrugs*

Without further ado, my dears…

The third installment in the all-new series from the #1 NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author Maggie Stiefvater!

Blue Sargent has found things. For the first time in her life, she has friends she can trust, a group to which she can belong. The Raven Boys have taken her in as one of their own. Their problems have become hers, and her problems have become theirs.

The trick with found things, though, is how easily they can be lost.

Friends can betray.
Mothers can disappear.
Visions can mislead.
Certainties can unravel.

First off, Blue Lily, Lily Blue took me FOREVER to read. Nearly a full month. NOT because it wasn’t good, but because life tried to eat me. I am ashamed it took me that long because it truly was a work of art, just as the books before it.

In this book, we definitely get to see more of Blue, which I loved. I personally feel like I, as the reader, needed to see more of Blue to be 100% sure I cared about her as much as I did Gansey, Adam, Ronan, and Noah. Blue is a kick-butt character through and through, but I loved her eccentricity and the feelings that she portrays. She’s a girl that can cry and feel things and still kick butt after. In my opinion, we need more female protagonists like that.

Also, just all of the characters. The main reason you should read this series is for the characters. You want to spend ALL the time with them, but Steifvater has an excellent way of making you feel like time is running out through her prose, so you soak in her books and characters more. (This was also an excellent plot device, by the way. Once life stopped eating me, I devoured the last 150 pages of this book in one afternoon. The tension and the need to find Welsh King Glendower is truly tangible.)

If you’re curious about even more of my thoughts on this book, here is a Goodreads update I posted near the middle of it:

“Noah, precious baby, /no/.
Gansey, your scholar is showing.
Ronan, /how dare you/ be an absolute gem.
Adam, /how dare you/ treat Ronan as anything other than a gem.
Blue, honey, you need some /psychiatric/ help, not /psychic/.”

Also, can I just brag about Maura and Mr. Gray (Blue’s mom and Blue’s mom’s boyfriend) respectively? They’re truly an underrated ship throughout the series, but I love the way they treat each other and treat Blue. Their maturity and respectfulness of each other and how their parenting of Blue works really shines through. It was wonderful to see. And in this book, we got to meet Gansey’s long-time friend Professor Malory and Professor Malory’s service dog, Dog. They are gems in and of themselves.

Final thoughts on the book:

“•Noah is still precious as ever and deserves protection.
•What the actual heck is the squash one, squash two song and where can I find it? Similarly, there should be fan t-shirts.
•”I am unknowable” – aka Adam Parrish. First, you are not. Second, let Ronan know you, dang it child. Third, I LOVED his growth in this book.
•Ronan Lynch is kind of a softie and I love it. He wanted to wake up some freaking cows. My heart.
•Blue and Gansey are beans, especially together, and my heart is going to explode.
•The Dog is an underrated character in this book, but he shouldn’t be. I love the Dog.

Onto Book 4 and I am Not Ready™️”

5/5 Stars.

The fourth and final installment in the spellbinding series from the irrepressible, #1 New York Times bestselling author Maggie Stiefvater.

All her life, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love’s death. She doesn’t believe in true love and never thought this would be a problem, but as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.

This. Book. I finished this final installment in The Raven Cycle series in eight days, and this time it only took me that long because I didn’t want the series to end. I wasn’t ready to give up the characters. I wasn’t ready to give up the search for Welsh King Glendower. I wasn’t ready, period.

The character interactions were everything I wanted them to be. Blue and Gansey recognizing their relationship and owning it. Adam knowing he is worth so much more than he originally thought, and Ronan helping him toward that goal. Ronan making amends with his brothers.

There was a new character introduced in this book, Henry. He was meant to replace Noah in their group, I know, but he was the perfect addition. As much as I loved Noah in all of the books, I was glad Henry found his place with Gansey and his gang. Henry is sassy, full of it, but deep and personal, and I loved that about him.

The plot wasn’t as consistent as the previous books. Steifvater ends her series in one of the most unexpected of ways, and while there were parts of me that were disappointed with that, there were also parts of me that respected her for that. It wasn’t an ending that didn’t make sense; it was just the complete opposite of what you hoped would happen. Bittersweet is a great word for it, and you all know I love me some bittersweet endings. *winks*

5/5 stars.

So what do I do with my life now? I honestly don’t know. People talk about reading Harry Potter for the first time and then feeling off-kilter; they don’t want to leave the Harry Potter world. They want to experience more. They want to dive back into the series and reread the moment they finish.

While I never truly experienced those same feelings for Harry Potter (ssh, don’t kill me), I have experienced them recently with both The Lunar Chronicles series and now with The Raven Cycle. I want more. I want to read them all over again. I have to satisfy myself, for now, with memes found on Pinterest.

If you haven’t read The Raven Cycle series, I cannot recommend them enough. These have jumped up to being an “Annual Read” series for me, and I look forward to starting that tradition next year.

*Another note here that for those of you that may be sensitive to content, there is some good language in these books and the last two books in the series have two LGBTQ+ characters.

Who is your favorite character in The Raven Cycle series? Did you enjoy the ending or were you disappointed/surprised?