They have an edge to them, for sure, and end up dealing not just with magic and the occult, but with the heavier things of YA (death, loss, even abuse, identity) and things like hating school, role models, sports cars, gadgets, nature and animals, some politics (as a general construct), even organized crime and hit men. Which just means they are more appropriate for boys who don’t love romance than you might at first think. Which means that these books are much heavier on the male perspective than one might think reading the back cover copy or the first chapters. And then she meets him.Īs much as the book begins with Blue, it takes the POV of five people: Blue and four Aglionby boys, Gansey, Ronan, Adam, and more rarely Noah. But when she attends an annual ritual with one of the many psychic women who live in her home at 300 Fox Way, she sees an Aglionby boy and knows he is going to die in the next year. So she stays away from true loves as much as she stays away from the obnoxious, rich boys who attend the private, boarding school in her town, the Aglionby Ravens. She is going to kill her true love with a kiss. The Raven Cycle opens with Blue-a girl from a small town in rural Virginia-and a prophecy. I ended up reading the cycle (of four, as you’ll read below), but I did not read Opal, the postquel, or the spin-off Dreamer Series. Book one, The Raven Boys, was on my TBR as YA lit that would be good to read while writing my own YA trilogy. This time, however, I read the Raven Cycle. Shiver is on my TBR (which means I might have to read all four Wolves of Mercy Falls books, eventually).

Dreamer Trilogy: Call Down the Hawk, Mister Impossible, Greywaren.

Wrote book 2 of the Spirit Animals series.The Raven Cycle: The Raven Boys, The Dream Thieves, Blue Lily Lily Blue, The Raven King and a postquel, Opal.Wolves of Mercy Falls: Shiver, Linger, Forever, Sinner.(The books she is most know for are Shiver, The Raven Cycle, and The Scorpio Races.) Beyond that, I can tell you what books she has published (basically in order).

Does she sell better in Europe? Even the booksellers I asked about her didn’t seem to know who I was talking about. I also can’t figure out how she’s a New York Times bestseller but her books aren’t around most bookshops I looked in.

She’s also an artist and (at least amateur) musician. But she seems to keep a pretty low profile and the most reliable info I could find is that she is a best-selling author, young(ish), and lives in Virginia with her husband and kids and animals. If you want the short of it, you could just read the first and last sections.)įinding information about Maggie Stiefvater is not as straight-forward as I would have expected in this day and age of digital TMI. (This is like the longest book review I’ve ever written.

The raven cycle dreamer trilogy