Book Review: The Raven King

Synopsis from Amazon:

All her life, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love’s death. She doesn’t believe in true love and never thought this would be a problem, but as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.

*WARNING: This review contains minimal spoilers for the first three books in The Raven Cycle series. Read at your own risk!*

I have mixed feelings about this book. I loved the characters, especially Henry who entered a more starring role in this novel, and the demon mixed with Piper was interesting. I also really liked the relationships and they gave me all the feels. What I really had a problem with was the plot. I wish I could say I understood the ending or the last 100 pages in general but I didn’t. The book kind of went way left in my opinion. Basically everything I suspected to happen didn’t happen and typically I’m happy to be caught by surprise but in this instance nothing made sense to me.

I’m not going to spoil it but I will say that to me the ending just made Gansey’s whole search for Glendower seem kind of meaningless. Similarly, I was really confused about Noah’s role and honestly I forgot about him multiple times during this book. I had to keep reminding myself who the fourth Raven Boy was and it felt like the reason Henry got a bigger role was because he kind of took Noah’s place. And I really did like Henry and thought he was a great addition, it just seemed strange to me that Noah was kind of phased out.

Also, the whole “Gansey’s going to die,” thing seemed very anticlimactic to me. We were told from the very first book that Gansey was going to die and then how everything played out just seemed kind of lame to me. I expected more. A lot more. If something’s going to be built up for four books I expect it to be a big deal and not what it turned out to be.

But despite these things I also genuinely loved this book, which is why I’m confused. Honestly if you’re a person that loves characters more than plot than you will enjoy this book. If you care more about the plot than you will hate this book. My favorite parts about this book were the relationships honestly. I could reread those scenes over and over again. Everything else I didn’t really care about to be honest. The magic stopped being interesting to me when I no longer understood it. The end just felt too random and it felt like the rules of magic I began to accept from the series suddenly changed.

Have you read The Raven King? Did you like it? Let me know in the comments! I’m dying to discuss this someone!

Stars: