This book is the physical manifestation of perfection.

This is a once in a lifetime series.

This book’s magic fills all my dark places with light.

This series reminded me why I fell in love with reading.

This series is the best thing I’ve read since Harry Potter and The Name of the Wind.

It’s always hard for me to write reviews for books that become my favorites. Hopefully those above five lines will help, or maybe they won’t. Either way, no amount of words I have can do justice for this masterpiece. You, yourself, should just give this series a chance and see if it puts you under the spell it has placed upon me.

“Humans were so circular; they lived the same slow cycles of joy and misery over and over, never learning. Every lesson in the universe had to be taught billions of times, and it never stuck.

Maybe it was good that the world forgot every lesson, every good and bad memory, every triumph and failure, all of it dying with each generation. Perhaps this cultural amnesia spared them all. Perhaps if they remembered everything, hope would die instead.”

This book really explores a lot of different individualities, and I can’t praise Maggie Stiefvater enough. These are the kind of books that YA needs; different stories that are unique, while the characters are different races, different sexualities, with different family dynamics. This book even portrays feminism beautifully, because at this point Blue is my spirit animal.

“Everything jumbled against everything else in just a few chaotic moments.
Fingers in hair, hands cupping necks, mouths dragged on cheeks and chins in dangerous proximity.
They stopped, noses mashed against each other in the strange way that closeness required.
She could feel his breath in her mouth.”

Blue and Gansey’s relationship guts me with every line. Blue’s pain resonates with me, and just rips my heart out over and over again. Luckily, I have masochistic tendencies and ask for more.

I know I’ve been gushing about diversity and romance, but this book also has a lot of plot to its story. Blue’s mom, Maura, is missing and Blue, Mr.Grey, and everyone else, is in a desperate search to get her back.

Adam and Ronan get more in touch with Cabeswater and start discovering not themselves but each other. *swoons forever*

This book also reintroduces a somewhat new villain, Colin Greenmantle, and his wife Piper. Only this new character will make a much unexpected twist that you won’t see coming.

The gang finds another cave entrance, but finds someone much different than their sleeping Welsh King.

The anticipation for The Raven King is going to kill me. I keep thinking about and rereading the first chapter of The Raven Boys and I find myself being haunted knowing that I’m going to reread that scene next month in a very different perspective. I don’t think there is anything I can do to physically or emotional prepare myself, and mostly my heart, for reading the The Raven King. I’m just going to relish in the heartbreak, while trying to remember that I will forever love this series.

“He left bloody fingerprints on the rock, but there was something satisfying about that.
I was here. I exist. I’m alive, because I bleed.”