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…
I recently had the extreme good fortune of meeting Maggie Stiefvater at Oblong Books and if you’re in NY, you should check them out, because they rock! And Maggie rocked too! She was funny and personable and gave a great talk about her books. I also found out that The Scorpio Races was her favorite book she’d written until The Dream Thieves. I thought The Scorpio Races was pretty much the best thing since sliced bread, so of course I came home and started reading The Dream Thieves immediately.
It was perfect. The slowly growing romance and the well developed characters reminded me of why I loved The Scorpio Races. The epic ending which could do for a complete series ending reminded me of my favorite part of The Raven Boys. And the sense of humor was both brilliant and all its own. The beauty of the writing reminded me of The Scorpio Races too and I like to imagine that that’s the author’s love of her story showing through. I loved this book and while I’ll continue to read Maggie’s book in general, her favorites will definitely be the ones I anticipate the most.
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Ooh, a Scorpio Races reference. I loved that book. Raven Boys was a four star read for me but I liked it well enough. Sounds like this one has a little improvement and that will make all the difference for me! Can’t wait to read more about Ronan!
Me too! I adored The Scorpio Races, but even though The Raven Boys was good, it wasn’t quite in the same league. Hopefully like me, you’ll find that The Dream Thieves is just as amazing as The Scorpio Races. I thought the feel was a bit different, with some really enjoyable dry humor I don’t remembering noticing in The Scorpio Races, but it did share a lot of the things I loved. And I could be imagining things since the author said she loved this book, but I thought the writing felt more inspired
I’ve never heard of this author OR book before, but I’m glad you got to meet the author
I find that sometimes I like books even better when the author is awesome.
I think having heard the author read an excerpt really made a difference to how I “heard” the book in my head. For instance, I thought this was a lot funnier than her previous book that I loved and it’s possible that it was hearing her intonation that made me notice her dry sense of humor. Either that or it’s actually just funnier
And I definitely feel happier to be reading her book because she seems like such a cool person.
I JUST got a copy of The Raven Boys from the library. I can’t remember why I wanted it, but seeing how much you liked the sequel made me excited to read it. Maybe i’ll take a break from nonfiction and start it tonight.
Wonderful! This is one of those ones I loved so much, I just want everyone else to read it
Um soooo cool to meet the author! I love meeting authors that I enjoy reading!!!
Me too! There aren’t many authors who come to central NY, but Oblong Bookstore seems to get some pretty famous ones
Oh man, I can’t believe I’ve had to put this off for so long! I’m so with you on The Scorpio Races!! The only issue is finding time for The Raven Boys and then The Dream Thieves. I’m jealous you got to see Maggie in person! She sounds awesome.
I can’t wait to hear what you think of these when you get to them! I’m curious if you’ll love The Dream Thieves as much as I did, since I do think it had a lot of the things that made me love The Scorpio Races so much, especially the beautiful writing
I have to agree with you. It’s one of those books that you can’t contain your enthusiasm for. Tell me, when you met Maggie Stiefvater, did she give you any indication that these characters actually exist? I have a working theory that they must considering how dynamic and rich each one of them is.
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It was so amazing! And that is a great question, because she did mention that her characters are based on real people. Some of them are people she knows and some of them are people she just met in passing, by sitting next to them on an airplane. She never reveals who her characters are based on though, except for mentioning that a lot of characters include a bit of – Ronan is some of her rebellious side, for example. I really enjoyed hearing her speak and would definitely recommend going to see her if you get a chance. Shee seems like such a fun person