Today, I’m recommending The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater, a powerful work of teen fiction that will enchant readers of all ages.
Magic, mysticism and the supernatural seamlessly weave through Stiefvater’s The Raven Boys from the very first sentence, where we meet sixteen-year-old Blue Sargent, who lives with her mother, aunts, and cousins in a little house in Henrietta, Virginia. All the women in Blue’s family are clairvoyants and seers, except for Blue.
She is unable to tell the future or commune with ghosts, until one fateful night, when Blue has a vision. She sees the spirit of a boy wearing a uniform from Aglionby Academy, the local private boy’s high school. Though Blue doesn’t know why she can see the boy’s spirit, she does know what it means. The boy will die sometime in the next twelve months.
Not long afterwards, Blue meets the boy whose spirit she saw. His name is Gansey, and she finds herself drawn to him in a way she can’t entirely explain. Despite her own policy of avoiding the wealthy and pretentious Aglionby boys, Gansey and his three best friends Noah, Ronan and Adam bulldoze their way into her life. Soon, Blue finds herself entangled in the boys’ all-consuming quest to find a mythical Welsh king that Gansey believes is buried somewhere amongst Henrietta’s hills.
Will this group of teens finish their quest? Is Gansey destined to die? Or can Blue save him? To find out what happens, check out this book and the other three novels in The Raven Cycle series at the Sioux City Public Library.
