Review: The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater
Publication date: September 18, 2012
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Page Count: 416 pages

Summary: It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive. Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them—not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her. His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble. But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can’t entirely explain. He has it all—family money, good looks, devoted friends—but he’s looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents all the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul who ranges from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher of the four, who notices many things but says very little. For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She never thought this would be a problem. But now, as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore. From Maggie Stiefvater, the bestselling and acclaimed author of the Shiver trilogy and The Scorpio Races, comes a spellbinding new series where the inevitability of death and the nature of love lead us to a place we've never been before.

I've seen a lot of hype for this series. A loooot. Not just from bloggers but even from people I follow on tumblr. So much passion for this series and it's characters. Especially it's characters. I'd heard about Richard Gansey III way before I even learned where he was even from. And the fan casts and graphics people on tumblr made were absolutely flawless. (For example, some I've loved recently are here, here, and here). What I'm trying to say is, I had expectations. Lots of them, more than I've had for a book in a long time. I also thought I knew how the book would go because of a lot of what I heard. But I was wrong. This book was nothing like I expected it to be. 

And I loved it.

Review: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin
Publication Date: Semptember 27, 2011
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Page Count: 456 pages

Summary: Mara Dyer believes life can't get any stranger than waking up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there. It can. She believes there must be more to the accident she can't remember that killed her friends and left her strangely unharmed. There is. She doesn't believe that after everything she's been through, she can fall in love. She's wrong. (via goodreads)

So, I've known about this series for quite a while now. At first I didn’t realize the last book had come out until recently but it’s been around and I've seen all sorts of mixed reviews for it, which left me intrigued because I more often see a collective love or dislike of a lot of books from the reviewers/bloggers I follow. Then Jess from My Reading Dress reviewed the series and I decided I had to finally give it a try. I have to say, I ended up enjoying the first book.