Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater – Review

Published: October 21, 2014

Publisher: Scholastic Press

Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy

Pages: 391 (Hardcover)

My Rating: 4.0/5.0

Synopsis:

There is danger in dreaming. But there is even more danger in waking up.

Blue Sargent has found things. For the first time in her life, she has friends she can trust, a group to which she can belong. The Raven Boys have taken her in as one of their own. Their problems have become hers, and her problems have become theirs.

The trick with found things though, is how easily they can be lost.

Friends can betray.
Mothers can disappear.
Visions can mislead.
Certainties can unravel.

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Blue Lily, Lily Blue is the third book in the Raven Cycle series by Maggie Stiefvater. Our beloved characters are continuing their search for Glendower but they’re also searching for Maura Sargent, who went missing at the end of The Dream Thieves.

I would have to say that this installment is the slowest book in regard to plot, but some really important, perception altering discoveries and events take place. I feel like Blue Lily, Lily Blue is just a precursor to all the EPICNESS that’s going to happen in The Raven King, so it’s okay with me that it was just kind of steering the plot along in anticipation of this. I will go ahead and say that I thought Mallory (Gansey’s elderly British associate) was entirely extraneous to the plot and he was mostly just there to annoy everyone else. Perhaps there’s a great reason that he showed up to tag along, but I haven’t figured it out yet unless it has something to do with the flag he discovered under his barn. It could definitely be that.

The amount of changes that some of the characters go through in this book really makes up for the slower plot. For example, Adam is finally accepting and understanding his role and the hands and eyes of Cabeswater and Ronan is extending his dream capabilities in an attempt to correct a mistake he never even knew he made. Blue of course is dealing with the disappearance of her mother along with the more mundane challenges of college applications, school, and boys (GANSEY!!). Noah is also having some issues in this book as well- he gets legitimately scary a few times and it’s not his fault, he’s a ghost and that makes him vulnerable to manipulation. Oh yeah, Greenmantle also shows up to cause trouble in a more direct manner than he has in the past and he brings his wife Piper along with him. I think she’s actually the power in that relationship, but I haven’t 100% decided on that yet.

Blue Lily, Lily Blue is my least favorite of the Raven Cycle books to this point, but it’s still a great book. I was a bit put off by a certain discovery that was made, mostly because I found the resulting songs annoying. It was a significant and important discovery- no doubt there- and it confirmed that Gansey is on the right trail in his hunt for Glendower. The end of this book implied that there’s going to be trouble in The Raven King, but I so look forward to the conclusion of this series. It’s probably going to be sad, but there’s always hope! #SaveGansey