The Many Twist and Turns in The Raven Boys
There are many twist and turns in Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Boys book. Blue Sargent is the only non-psychic in a family full of psychics. One of the first twists in the book is when she sees a spirit in the form of a boy wearing an Aglionby Academy sweater named Gansey. She is told by her family that he is either her true love or that she is destined to kill him. Neither of these things happened in this book. The entire book you sit on pins and needles waiting for her to kill him accidentally or for him to die. This is a huge twist because the book is not romantic in nature at all so she never falls in love with anybody, even the boy she’s dating. She also never kills him. Despite the big hints at romance in the beginning of the book there really is no romance at all. They all act like a big pack of friends. Blue doesn’t even know about Adams dead-end life in a trailer with his abusive father.
The next big twist and turn is Ganseys storyline. He is looking for an ancient and mystical sleeping king named Glendower. The king that, once found, will grant him a wish. Throughout the book he is obsessed with his search. You would think by the end of the book this issue would be resolved but, once again he never finds the sleeping king.
Noah is an odd roommate and you can tell right away that something is very wrong with him. The huge twist about Noah is that he has actually been dead the entire time he knew the other boys. Noah was murdered by his friend seven years before. That Noah is actually a ghost is probably the only twist in the story actually explained completely.
The character Neeve had a huge twist in the book. For a while you think she’s going to be murdered by Whelk but she ends up disappearing because of some kind of magic that Blues family conjured up. The huge twist here is that Neeve disappeared the exact same way that Blues father disappeared years ago. There is a great foreshadowing here that perhaps Neeve and Blues father are in the same place.
My favorite part of this book was the bond between the four friends and their loyalty to each other. The most frustrating part of this book was the lack of resolution to too many storylines. It was quite obviously the first book in a series. Nonetheless I'm looking forward to reading the next book.