Poudelivre

I think rereading books is something we do far too little. It’s normal to only read a book once, but how fun is that? I have a lot of novels that I love, that I’ve only read one time because there are so many more books that I haven’t read that needs my attention. One book I like to reread, and most certainly will read again, is Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Boys. It’s a magical story about pretty much everything I love and it’s executed in a beautiful way.

This novel is about love and death but also friendships and cars. Blue Sargent lives in a house filled with clairvoyant women but she has no psychic abilities herself. Despite that she sees a spirit on St. Mark’s Eve, and she’s told that if a non-seer does that it means that you’ll either kill that person or you're his true love. Blue has also been told that she will kill her true love if she kisses him and her half-aunt has said that this is the year Blue will fall in love, so it rather seems like something drastic will change in her life soon.

That change comes in the form of four boys. Gansey, Adam, Ronan and Noah, four best friends searching for ley lines and a Welsh king, Glendower, that has been asleep for hundreds of years. Blue is caught up in their search, despite her rules of not spending time with boys from Aglionby Academy, the private all-boys school in their town that the boys attend. She wants to find Glendower just as much as the boys and even though the thrill of the search is great, she wants the favour that is promised to the person who awakes Glendower from his sleep. She wants it so she can save Gansey, because it was his spirit she saw on St. Mark’s Eve.

Rereading this novel make me fall in love with it again and again. I think I like it even more now than I did the first time I read it, something that doesn’t happen often. It’s down to two things, really. The characters and Stiefvater’s writing. You can tell that the characters are crafted with so much love and they feel so very real. They’re all different and yet the same, just like five best friends are supposed to be. The characters carry this story, a story that is very interesting but wouldn’t be half as good if it didn’t have Gansey, Adam, Ronan, Noah and Blue in it.

The second thing, the writing, is also important. A badly written story is not worth reading, in my opinion, but Stiefvater certainly knows how to write. It’s like no other book I’ve ever read, both funny and serious, often at the same time. There’s something very special about the way Stiefvater has written this novel and the book is extraordinary. I don’t think it’s a story that everyone will love, but I certainly do. If you like good writing, funny characters, magic, psychics and cars, this is the novel for you!