Falling For YA

For those of you who are having trouble remembering what went down in The Raven Boys Maggie has (humorously and excellently) re-capped the events here. The end of The Raven Boys left us on a bit of a cliffhanger, the ley line has awakened, Adam is a bit different, and the search for Cabeswater is on.

The Dream Thieves is Ronan’s book. In The Raven Boys I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about Ronan, he seemed distant and his chapters were my least favorite to read. That completely changed in The Dream Thieves. I looked forward to reading about Ronan and getting to know more about his past and his ability to bring things from dreams in to real life.

While I was intrigued by Ronan and excited to see the whole gang again I thought the novel started off a little slow. It took me a while to remember what exactly happened (I wish I’d found the recap earlier). It wasn’t until Kavinsky drove on to the scene that I really felt connected to the story and couldn’t put it down.

I unabashedly love Kavinsky. I love him the same way you love things that are absolutely terrible for you. He is not a good guy, he does bad things, and he doesn’t give a shit what you think about that. The scenes with Kavinsky and Ronan are my favorite scenes in any of the books I’ve read so far this year. They have this strange sort of relationship. If Ronan didn’t have Gansey I have no doubt he would have embraced Kavinsky and that would have been an amazing, terrible, brilliant alliance.

Because the story focused mostly on Ronan I felt like I didn’t see nearly enough of the other characters. I especially missed Gansey. In the first book he was by far my favorite character, and I loved the insights in to his personality. In this novel Gansey doesn’t play as pivotal a role but he is definitely the leader. Gansey is like the sun, and everything in the plot rotates around him.

This book also introduces the Grey man. He is a hitman and is looking for the greywaren for an employer. The mysterious employer is never seen but for a hitman Mr. Grey is really likable. He is educated, has morals, and I loved the budding relationship between him and Blue’s mom. I actually look forward to seeing more of him in the next book and learning about this mysterious employer. There seem to be a lot of people after this Welsh King!

While I did enjoy The Dream Thieves (thoroughly enjoyed) there were a few reasons I couldn’t give it five stars. One was that the novel started off slowly and it took me a while to become reacquainted with everything, second that I didn’t see enough of the rest of the gang (Kavinsky might have made up for this though, I do so love that guy), and third I wish that there had been more romance. While the romance in the story does take a step in the right direction it was still very much in the background.

Overall, The Dream Thieves was a fun sequel to The Raven Boys. Once I got in to the story I was completely immersed and was sad to see it end. I am now eagerly awaiting the next book, especially after that ending!