Book Review: All The Crooked Saints

 All The Crooked Saints by Maggie Stiefvater

Released: October 10th, 2017

Read: October 2017

Publisher: Scholastic Press

Format: ARC, 311 pages

Series: n/a

Description from GoodReads: Here is a thing everyone wants: a miracle.
Here is a thing everyone fears: what it takes to get one.
   Any visitor to Bicho Raro, Colorado is likely to find a landscape of dark saints, forbidden love, scientific dreams, miracle-mad owls, estranged affections, one or two orphans, and a sky full of watchful desert stars.
   At the heart of this place you will find the Soria family, who all have the ability to perform unusual miracles. And at the heart of this family are three cousins longing to change its future: Beatriz, the girl without feelings, who wants only to be free to examine her thoughts; Daniel, the Saint of Bicho Raro, who performs miracles for everyone but himself; and Joaquin, who spends his nights running a renegade radio station under the name Diablo Diablo.
   They are all looking for a miracle. But the miracles of Bicho Raro are never quite what you expect.

Review: This book is kind of like a bedtime story. The narrator meanders and builds the world and characters so you can fall in love with each of them in turn. I don't mean it as an insult when I say that there's no pulse-pounding, gut-wrenching action. It's something I haven't seen before, and I really like it. There's a lot of character. If you can picture a bunch of characters standing out in the desert, you are about halfway to the amount of characters in the story, and you didn't even count the desert as one. Sometimes, like a true bedtime storyteller, the names or backstories get a little confusing. (#itsDarlenesRooster) But all the characters are lovely, with complex but simple wants and fears that are developed through clear story arcs. Like I said, the narrator meanders. The book describes side character's side characters background stories. It compares radio waves to miracles, and informs us in detail of a plant that takes over its environment. The intricate details set the storybook tone throughout the book. Altogether, the novel has a languid, bedtime storyteller feel that may bore some people, but I found it interesting and relaxing.

Book Review: The Raven King

The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater

Released: April 26, 2016

Read: April 2016

Publisher: Scholastic Press

Format: Hardcover, 439 pages

Series: The Raven Cycle #4

Description from GoodReads: Nothing living is safe. Nothing dead is to be trusted.
   For years, Gansey has been on a quest to find a lost king. One by one, he’s drawn others into this quest: Ronan, who steals from dreams; Adam, whose life is no longer his own; Noah, whose life is no longer a lie; and Blue, who loves Gansey… and is certain she is destined to kill him.
   Now the endgame has begun. Dreams and nightmares are converging. Love and loss are inseparable. And the quest refuses to be pinned to a path.

Review: I normally dislike books that get dark and ruined until the last half of the book, but this one did it so well that I loved it. Almost everyone gets their stories wrapped up nicely enough to make me happy, but loosely enough to keep it realistic and open.
   It was also treated as not only an ending, but as just another book in the series, although things were getting progressively worse (not like bad-worse, but like plot-thickening-worse). New characters were introduced, old characters were built upon, the story continued.
   The ending was so good, I just can't get over it! Oh man I don't want to spoil anything, but it wasn't as welsh-kingy as I expected! Problems weren't solved with a flick of a wrist or a snap of a finger, it was real! It was personal and touching, more than I thought it would be. I felt like I was intruding on something deep and dark that I wasn't supposed to see. Whoo boy am I going on a rant.
   All in all, I adored this series, and this, the final book was just as good.

Quotable Quotes:
"His feelings for Adam were an oil spill; he'd let them overflow and now there wasn't a damn place in the ocean that wouldn't catch fire if he dropped a match."

"What a strange constellation they all were."

"It wasn't that Henry was less of himself in English. He was less of himself out loud. His native language was thought."

"Richard Gansey III had forgotten how many times he had been told he was destined for greatness."

Rating: 10/10

Read if You Liked: the deeper aspects of Harry Potter, teenagers finding themselves, (screaming)

Optimistically yours, Ola <3
(now off to read the other novel titled the Raven King)

Book Review: The Dream Thieves

The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater

Release Date: September 17th, 2013
Read: Oct/Nov 2015
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Format: Hardcover, 439 pages

Descriptions from GoodReads: Ronan Lynch has secrets. Some he keeps from others. Some he keeps from himself.
   One secret: Ronan can bring things out of his dreams.
And sometimes he's not the only one who wants those things.
   Ronan is one of the raven boys—a group of friends, practically brothers, searching for a dead king named Glendower, who they think is hidden somewhere in the hills by their elite private school, Aglionby Academy. The path to Glendower has long lived as an undercurrent beneath town. But now, like Ronan's secrets, it is beginning to rise to the surface—changing everything in its wake.

Review: Oh boy, oh boy did I love this book. This is the second book in the Raven Cycle series (which was also amazing), and it was just as surprisingly gritty and realistic as the first one. I'm glad the author decided to focus more on Ronan in this book, because I felt like his backstory was held together pretty loosely in The Raven Boys.

   One of my favourite things about this series is the intricate relationship between all of the raven boys. 

Quotable Quotes:

"In that moment, Blue was a little in love with all of them."

"And Ronan was everything that was left: molten eyes and a smile made for war."

"Dying's a boring side effect."- Joseph Kavinsky

Rating: 4.5/5

Read if you liked: the House of Anubis, the Diviners, Shiver, history, bromances (winks)

Optimistically yours, Ola <3