Woman Reading

Oh my gosh Maggie! I can literally feel your work getting better and better with each book you write. That was amazing, beautiful, heart pounding... the way you weave your words together in description, it just made my chest tighten and it felt hard to breathe. Keep this up and I'll have a new author to add to my insta-buy list!

(Spoilers if you haven't read book one!)

Gansey's delight was infectious and unconditional, broad as his grin. Adam tipped his head back to watch, something still and faraway around his eyes. Noah breathed "woah", his palm still lifted as if waiting for the plane to return to it. And Ronan stood there with his hands on the ocntroller and his gaze on the sky, not smiling, but not frowning, either. His eyes were frighteningly alive, the curve of his mouth savage and pleased. It suddenly didn't seem at all surprisng that he should be able to pull things from his dreams.

In that moment, Blue was a little in love with all of them. Their magic. Their quest. Their awfulness and strangeness. Her raven boys.

That quote right there, that one I just posted, I love ones like that. It sums up the personalities of the group almost perfectly. It gives little glimpse into the heart of each of them and how well she wove it all into one little paragraph.

At the end of book one Adam has sacrificed himself to the ley line, Ronan has revealed that he can pull things out of his dreams, Noah is dead and a ghost that fades in and out, and Gansey feels as though he may lose all of them. The sequel has the group still searching for the legendary Glendower, the lost Welsh King, and shows Gansey still trying to hold the group together. It introduces Kavinski, a very bad dude, and The Gray Man, a very questionable man that you're not sure what side of the line he will land on. It has more pretty epic secrets revealed and relationships permanently altered.

It had me all tied up in knots, unable to tell you which character I loved most. I can tell you that in book one Adam made me swoon, but in this book it was all about Gansey.

Blue had been staring at Gansey in a way that was more conspicuous for the fact that she was trying to be inconspicuous about it. It was equal parts started and impressed. It was true that Gansey rarely wore jeans and a T-shirt, preferring collared shirts and cargo pants if he wasn't in a tie. And it was true he wore them well; the T-shirt hung on his shoulders in a way that revealed all kinds of pleasant nooks and corners that a button-down usually hid. But Ronan suspected that Blue was most shocked by how it made Gansey look like a boy, for once, something like one of them.

So yeah, it was about those 'pleasant nooks and corners' that his button-down's hid, lol. But, it was also about how sad and lonely he was: "That he should have so many friends and yet feel so very alone. He felt it fell to him to comfort them, but never the other way around." Ugh, I mean how can you NOT feel for him.

It wasn't just Gansey though; all of them broke my heart at least once in this book. I won't post more quotes as example because for the rest of them the quotes would be spoilers. Suffice to say, you will feel their pain.

And I mentioned it in my first review, but the ladies of 300 Fox Way are such WONDERFUL additions to this story. I love reading about Maura, Persephone, Calla, and Orla just as much as the Raven group. They're funny and powerful, and most scenes that they were in were amazing. (Just a quick note, some of the best scenes in the book were between Mr. Gray and Maura. Loved it.)

Lastly, the book was FUNNY. On top of being sad and deep and poetic, it was FUNNY. Wendy likes funny. I don't know how many times I busted out in laugher, out loud guys, at inopportune times. Very embarrassing.

Orla tossed her head, her magnificently large nose describing a circle in the air. Then she tore off her bell-bottoms so fast that all the boys in the boat just stared at her, dazzled and stunned. Gansey couldn't understand the speed of it. One moment, she was wearing clothing, and the next moment, she was wearing a bikini. Fifty percent of the world was brown skin and fifty percent was orange nylon. From the Mona Lisa smile on Orla's lips, it was clear she was pleased to finally be allowed to demonstrate her true talents.

A tiny part of Gansey's brain said: You have been staring for too long.

The larger part of his brain said: ORANGE!

I loved this book. I loved the foreshadowing, (did anyone else chuckle that Ronan's mom was named Aurora? Aka, sleeping beauty?), I loved the characters and relationships, I loved the writing, I loved the pacing. I do not have one complaint about this book. It was amazing. It raked me over the coals, and then spun me around and made me laugh. It was a 5 star book.

There are three kinds of secrets.  One is the sort everyone knows about, the sort you need at least two people for.  One to keep it.  One to never know.  The second is a harder kind of secret: one you keep from yourself.  Every day, thousands of confessions are kept from their would-be confessors, none of these people knowing that their never-admitted secrets all boil down to the same three words: I am afraid.