96. The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

#1 Raven Cycle
listened on Audible
2012 Scholastic
409 pgs.
YA Fantasy
Finished 11/14/2018
Goodreads rating:  4.06 - 198,743 ratings
My rating:  5
Setting:  Contemporary Henrietta, Virginia

First line/s:  "Blue Sargent had forgotten how many times she'd been told that she would kill her true love."

My comments:  Read on the drive home from Maine, through actual sleet and snow and rain and it was the perfect book to listen to on this particularly arduous journey, lol.  It was so good.  I loved the elements of magic, the otherwordly "stuff" that become reality.  I have really good pictures in my mind of the four boys, but the picture of Blue, the female protagonist, is hazier.  I really hope I get more insight into her in the next books - which I hope I can get my hands on asap!

Goodreads synopsis:  “There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark’s Eve,” Neeve said. “Either you’re his true love . . . or you killed him.”
          It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive.
          Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them—not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her.
          His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble.
          But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can’t entirely explain. He has it all—family money, good looks, devoted friends—but he’s looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents all the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul who ranges from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher of the four, who notices many things but says very little.
          For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She never thought this would be a problem. But now, as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.
          From Maggie Stiefvater, the bestselling and acclaimed author of the Shiver trilogy and The Scorpio Races, comes a spellbinding new series where the inevitability of death and the nature of love lead us to a place we’ve never been before.

1. Grounded - Heather Ordover

Supposedly #1 in a series (called The Seven) ....

Read on my iPhone

2013, Crafting a Life Books

482 (endless) pgs.

YA fantasy-ish

Finished 1/1/2014

Goodreads rating: 4.19 (this is very hard for me to believe)

My rating:  (1) Yuck

1st sixth - Tucson, AZ, the rest in Brooklyn NY and Stockbridge, MA

1st sentence/s: "This all started because I lit my boyfriend on fire."

My comments:  Holy catfish, this book was NOT for me.  It was endless, but I had no other book on my phone so this was it. I so badly wanted to like it, particularly for the parts that described Tucson so beautifully, but this was a definite DRONE....on and on and on and on with very little meat. Sketchy, too.  There are so few books that I flat out don't like, and my apologies to the author, but....

Goodreads book summary:  Hannah Rose was able to convince herself that she was a normal teenager, even though she usually knew exactly what was about to happen next. Until one day when she set her jerk of an ex-boyfriend on fire-from 15 feet away-propelling herself into a world of weirdness.       
          Rosie is sent to live with her aunt in Brooklyn. There, Rosie discovers a family legacy of strange abilities and dangerous talents. Her training tests her gifts-and her patience-but over the summer she does begin to learn to control her unique skills and meets a boy with equally dangerous strengths. Together, they find a sort of peace that neither has ever experienced, and it looks like it will last-until disaster breaks them apart in a way neither saw coming.

44. Listening for Lucca - Suzanne LaFleur

2013, Wendy Lamb Books, Random House

232 pgs.

Mid Grades Fantastic RF

Finished 9/21/2013

Goodreads Rating: 3.93

My Rating:  Liked it (3) 

TPPL

Contemporary coast of Maine, with forays back to 1944

My comments:  This book was set in Maine, in a big house right on the beach, and I wish the setting had been explored a little more.  This wasn't realistic fiction, it was fantasy, because Siena, the protagonist, could see into people-of-the-past's lives. Trying to figure out how to help her three-year-old brother, Lucca, to talk was a driving force in her life.  Her abilities to see and touch the lives of the family that lived 60 years before in her house is the "key" that helps this happen.

Goodreads Review:  "I'm obsessed with abandoned things." Siena's obsession began a year and a half ago, around the time her two-year-old brother Lucca stopped talking. Now Mom and Dad are moving the family from Brooklyn to Maine hoping that it will mean a  whole new start for Lucca and Siena. She soon realizes that their wonderful old house on the beach holds secrets. When Siena writes in her diary with an old pen she found in her closet, the pen writes its own story, of Sarah and Joshua, a brother and sister who lived in the same house during World War II. As the two stories unfold, amazing parallels begin to appear, and Siena senses that Sarah and Joshua's story might contain the key to unlocking Lucca's voice.