How Do You Catch a Raven Boy? A review of The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle Book 1) by Maggie Stiefvater

I loved this book! I loved all the characters. I loved the lush language. Even when the boys did something that I wished that they hadn't done--I got it. I understood why that character would do that stupid thing, and still not seem stupid, because I understood that character so well that I could see why they would do that thing that I wished they hadn't done...and that happened often, but not too often. And there were so many things that I just hadn't seem coming. As soon as I finished this book, I bought the second in the series. And it's the same thing all over again.

Years ago, I read Stiefvater's Shiver and I didn't love it. I didn't hate it, but I felt Meh about it. I remember telling my daughter that the language felt forced-like she was try too hard. But I don't know how many books later, Stiefvater's language feels effortless and beautiful.

Here's a few of my favorite lines:
Gansey was just a guy with a lot of stuff and a hole inside him that chewed away more of his heart every year.

Not the scent of rain coming, but the living, shifting odor of a storm currently waging, the wide-open scent of a breeze moving through water.

The approval of someone like him, who clearly care for no one, seemed like it would be worth more.

They filled the hallway to overflowing, somehow, the three of them, loud and male and so comfortable with one another that they allowed no one else to be comfortable with them.

This was a conversation they'd had before, and entire days of arguments were replayed in the few moments of quiet. The words had been said often enough that they didn't need to be said again.

At night, Henrietta felt like magic, and at night, magic felt like it might be a terrible thing.

cicadas louder than your thoughts.

Blue saw that this expression--a wrinkle pinched between his eyebrows, mouth tense--was his normal one. It fit his features perfectly.

Both of them could trot out logic on a nice little leash, wearing a smart plaid jacket, when they wanted to.

Gansey was the way he was because he had lived with money when he was small, like a virtuoso placed on a piano bench as soon as he could sit. Adam, a late comer, a usurper, still stumbled over his clumsy Henrietta accent and kept his change in a cereal box under his bed.