The Dream Thieves

Title: The Dream Thieves
Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Source: bought at Oblong Books/from publisher for review
Rating: ★★★★★
Review Summary: Amazing! Included everything I love about Maggie’s writing- well-rounded characters; believable relationship development; writing that can be beautiful or hilarious; and an epic ending.

The Dream Thieves is the sequel to The Raven Boys. It continues the story of Blue and the boy who is her true love, but who will die if she kisses him. The focus of the book, however, is on one of the other boys. Ronan is a complete punk at first glance, but there’s more to him than meets the eye. Not only can he be nicer than you might expect, he also the ability to dream things into reality. And some very bad people would love to make use of that ability if they find out who he is…

Bookends – Finishing the Raine Benares Series

Current Fiction Readings

This week I’ve finally (after waiting a whole day :-P) gotten to read the rest of the published books in the Raine Benares series.  Although the plot in each book is pretty unique, the second and third books did seem a  lot like the first.  One common complaint which I share is that the author reuses words and phrases from book to book.  It’s not unreasonable for the author to recap parts of earlier books, but most other authors are able to do this without directly quoting the previous books.  The direct quotes gave me an unpleasant feeling of deja vu which pulled me out of the current action a little bit. In the first book, I enjoyed all the flirting.  I thought it was enough to give the books a little sex appeal, but not enough I’d be uncomfortable if my mom looked over my shoulder.  But by the third book or so all the almost having sex was beginning to feel kind of ridiculous – it was obvious it was going to happen, but it never did!  The fourth book was one of my favorites, both because something (no spoilers, I promise!) does happen in terms of sex and some of the bad guys begin to get what’s coming to them.  This made for a very satisfying read.  The fifth book was also much more action packed in terms of fighting the bad guys and in Raine’s sex life.  I really liked these last two and can’t wait for the new book this year!

Non-Project Non-Fiction

None this week.  Surprisingly, I’ve actually had less time to read at home than I did my last week at school, so I haven’t done a whole lot of extra non-fiction reading!

Summary

Armed and Magical (book 2) and The Trouble with Demons (book 3) – 4 stars – new engaging plots, but largely similar to the first book in tone, style and wording.

Bewitched and Betrayed (book 4) and Con and Conjure (book 5) – 5 stars – I really enjoyed these two!  Much more satisfyingly action-packed than the previous two books.