Maggie Stiefvater’s Raven Cycle is complete! And it all began with The Raven Boys… #YAfiction

Maggie Stiefvater’s Raven Cycle is now complete! And The Raven Boys is your starting point for esoteric YA that treats readers like adults.

Blue Sargent is the only non-psychic in a family of psychics. While Blue’s presence can heighten the powers of her family, she’s never experienced a vision, mysterious dream, or magical prophecy. Every April, Blue joins her mother on Saint Mark’s night and waits patiently for the ghostly procession of the soon-to-be-dead so her mother can record the deaths for the coming year.

Only a clairvoyant can watch the procession. Her Aunt Neeve says, “There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark’s Even… Either you’re his true love, or you killed him.”

And that’s when she sees him.

Since she was a child, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die if she kisses him. Since Blue doesn’t believe in true love, she never thought this would be a problem. Of course, she never thought she would see the specter of Richard Gansey the Third on Saint Mark’s night, either.

Gansey is one of The Raven Boys, a group of wealthy students who attend the private Aglionby Academy. The Raven Boys are trouble. Blue does her best to stay away from them, just as she always has, but she finds herself being drawn into the charismatic Gansey’s quest to find a mythical Welsh king he believes is buried in the Virginia countryside.

Blue slowly finds herself as part of the Raven Boys and begins to accompany Adam, the scholarship student who works hard to earn his place in the academy, the impulsive and abrasive Ronan, and the quiet Noah, as they follow Gansey on his impossible quest.

The Raven Boys is the first novel in Maggie Stiefvater’s Raven Cycle and was originally published by Scholastic in 2012.

Stiefvater animated the book’s trailer using hundreds of pencil drawings.

The Raven Boys is a novel of friendship and adventure. Stiefvater skillfully weaves together multiple characters with beautiful, haunting prose to create the first novel in a series that drags the reader through the heart of the sleepy Virginia Countryside to a place that is truly magical.

Though published as Young Adult fiction, Stiefvater treats her readers like adults and surprises them with esoteric references and an eccentric cast of characters.

The Raven Boys has romance, but it is not a love story, unless the love is with the feeling of the sun shining through a car window on a hot summer day while the radio is turned up high.

The Raven Boys has psychics and ghosts, but it not a paranormal adventure. The magic in The Raven Boys is subtle and coincidental.  It is the kind of magic that tricks you into thinking you can find it buried somewhere in the woods.

It’s the kind of book that can only be explained by reading it, loving it, and passing it on to another reader so they can share in the magic and adventure Stiefavter has crafted. Don’t want to take my word for it? The Raven Boys has won a variety of awards and lists, including YALSA’s 2013 Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults, Publisher Weekly’s Best Books of 2012, and appears on Rolling Stone’s Best 40 Young Adult Novels.

If there’s one book you’re going to read this summer, make it The Raven Boys. The entire Raven Cycle to date (including The Dream Thieves and Blue Lily, Lily Blue) has been released by Scholastic Books and is available at your local library, independent bookstore, or Amazon.

Keep your eye out for the much-anticipated final book, The Raven King.