Blue Lily, Lily Blue

Blue Lily, Lily Blue (2014) Maggie Stiefvater

I knew this was not going to end cleanly. I KNEW it.

But I read it anyway, because OMG I love this series.

This book begins a few weeks after the last book ended. Maura is missing, Blue and the Raven Boys are getting ready to start school, and everything is in a turmoil. Adam is still trying to come to terms with what Cabeswater wants him to do; Ronan is settling back into being allowed home; Gansey is still searching for Glendower; and Noah is still dead.

The Dream Thieves was very much Ronan’s book. This story is spread more evenly across all four characters, with some meandering down the paths of the residents of Fox Way.

We also get a visit from Malory.

One of his bags was open and Blue could see that it was entirely filled with books. This struck her as impractical and Gansey-like and made her feel a bit more benevolent toward the professor.

So for obvious reasons, this passage made me all but cackle with glee:

“Spruce Knob. Highest peak in West Virginia . Forty-five hundred feet or something like that?”
“Highest peak in Virginia?” echoed Malory.
“West,” said Gansey and Adam at the same time.
“West Virginia,” Gansey repeated…

Ronan is still an asshole, but every time you being to think he’s irredeemable, he does something like this:

Ronan scoffed. Him, fear for his own life. But there was something in his eyes, still. He studied his hands and admitted, “I’ve dreamt him a box of EpiPens. I dream cures for stings all the time. I carry one. I put them in the Pig. I have them all over Monmouth.”
Adam felt a ferocious and cruel hope. “Do they work?”
“I don’t know. And there’s no way to find out before it actually happens. There won’t be a rematch.”

There are so many reasons to love this story. For instance, the little peeks you get into how each of the teens turned out the way they did.

Blue was not so much a terrible driver as a terrified one. Because she had not, as Jesse Dittley pointed out, eaten her greens, she had to adjust the seat as close to the pedals as possible. She clutched the steering wheel with the grace of a performing bear. Everything on the dash shouted for her attention. Lights? Speed! Air on face? Air on feet! Fuel-oil-engine! Strange bacon symbol?

She drove very slowly. The worst part of her terror was how angry it made her. There was nothing about the process of driving that seemed confusing or unfair to her. She’d aced her driver’s test. She knew what everything apart from the bacon symbol did. Road signs never perplexed; right of way was logical. She was a champion yielder. Give her forty minutes and she could parallel park the Fox Way Ford in any place you liked.

But she could never forget that she was a tiny pilot in a several-thousand-pound weapon. “It’s just because you haven’t practiced enough,” Noah said generously, but he was gripping the door handle in a way that seemed redundant for the already dead.

STRANGE BACON SYMBOL!

But let me be clear about two things: 1) someone dies in this book and 2) it doesn’t end well. You might be okay if you skipped the epilogue. In fact, that’s what I recommend. Just skip the epilogue entirely. Go back and read it IN A YEAR WHEN THE NEXT BOOK COMES OUT.

I’m not patient. I hate waiting.

But more importantly, if you have not read Raven Boys and The Dream Thieves, you need to go out RIGHT NOW and remedy that situation. Because you should also be in love with Blue and Ronan and all the other Raven Boys.
Rating: 8.5/10 (points lost for the epilogue)

Published by Scholastic Press

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