Pierrot and Rose were both abandoned as infants and grew up in an orphanage deprived of any love or affection. Despite this, they both keep their fantastical minds and their love for the ordinary and wonderful. This book follows them as they grow up, fall in love, are ripped apart and finally find each other again.

This book, oh my lord. It's so beautiful and heart-wrenching and wanted me to stamp on it and hug it at the same time. The writing in this is just BEAUTIFUL, even though some passages were rather crude in nature. I really wanted to just drink the words in - just the way they were crafted onto the page gave me everything I wanted for and from the characters while still leaving me wanting more.

I was definitely not expecting how sexual this book was going to be - literally from the very first page but I think it worked in favor for the story in the end. It gave it a grittiness that left all the rest of eccentric parts whole. It balanced it out nicely.

I left this just craving more and I'm definitely picking up Heather O' Neill's other books because her writing is everything I've been looking for.

Scarlett Dragna is about to get married to a man she's never met when she receives special tickets to Caraval - a magical carnival she's been obsessed with since she was small. When her little sister Donatella tricks her into taking up the offer, Scarlett ends up in a strange, magical game where Tella has gone missing and she needs to find her before its too late.

This was just as magical as I thought it would be and I really fell in love with the world of Caraval. It was extremely unique and despite having read The Night Circus, which follows a similar theme, the book are very different in both their moods and plots. It took me a while to warm up to Scarlett - for reasons which are easy to understand, she's a bit stiff and afraid of letting go but gradually her strength and fortitude won me over and I began to really root her on. I enjoyed her tenuous friendship with Julian, though he himself intrigued me so I was eager to see who he really was by the end of the book. I liked that the book ended up with some mystery still intact and it seems like the next book is going to be just as great. I gave this book 4 stars instead of 5 just because I didn't fall in love with it quite as much as I thought it was but it was still a great, imaginative and magical read.

I received a free copy of this book from Accent Press in exchange for an honest review.

Diana is an ex-model used to being stared at for her beauty. But she’s finding it hard to make her way in the world of art and as an artist. While at a party one night, Diana meets a young boy called Cal who was born with severe facial disfigurements. Cal becomes Diana’s muse but while she feels like she’s helping him as he helps her with her work, she might actually be destroying him.

This book ended up being a lot more enjoyable than I thought, and really well written. I liked the gritty setting of Hulme in Manchester and felt like the 90s college vibe, drugs, drinks and grunge vibe near the start of the book really suited the tone of the type of art world Diana seemed to be involved with.

This book has a way of making you feel really uncomfortable because while Diana does seem to have good intentions with Cal and she genuinely cares for him, her main motive is using him as her muse. And it just feels wrong. But this is one of the reasons why I enjoyed reading the book - I kind of wanted to put it down but at the same time I couldn’t.

I would have liked to have seen a bit more progress when it came to Cal’s mental health I think, as he did really struggle with it for a while as a teenager and it could be quite worrisome. We don’t really know if he got the help he needed or not and I feel it’s important that getting help like that is addressed in books that have characters suffering from depression.

I did quite enjoy this book and liked getting a peek into the world of art through it as well.

I liked this book A LOT better than The Raven Boys. There was something about the first instalment in this series that just didn't click with me. But The Dream Thieves totally made up for the disappointment I felt after reading The Raven Boys.

A major strength of this series is the strength of the relationships in it. I'm not talking about Blue/Adam or Blue/Gansey (I'm actually not a major fan of Blue, I find her a bit of a vacant moan. She doesn't fill the page the way Gansey or Ronan do.) It's the relationships between the boys which does it for me. The connection that Gansey has with Adam, and then the frayed but forever strong link with Ronan.

I actually find Ronan really intriguing. There is something so dark and terrifying about him, and a very...intense relationship with Gansey. I had wondered before if he was possibly gay, and then when Kravinsky came along, I thought I would find out if he was for sure. But I think Ronan, if anything, is asexual. He is simply a creature of the night, who walks in dreams and takes what he wills.

The magic about this book is not Cabeswater or the ley lines. It's the joining of one word to another, from Ronan's knife of a smile to the smudginess of Noah. Maggie has a way of making magic out of descriptions, and she allows something ordinary to become extraordinary. It's a pleasure and a privilege to read the words she's created

It's been about a year and a half since I read The Dream Thieves and ohmygod I forgot how good the writing in these books are. I have said it before and I will repeat it, I'm not one of the crazy fan girls about this series, it's not one of my favourites but damn, I can appreciate the magic of these words.

I love all the relationships in this series. Gansey and Blue. Blue and Noah. Gansey and Adam. Gansey and Ronan. RONAN AND ADAM. Their was a beautiful quote from Blue at one stage that summed up the feelings in this book, and one of the reasons I think that everyone is so entranced by The Raven Boys.

"Orla wasn't wrong, of course. But what she didn't realize about Blue and her boys was that they were all in love with one another. She was no less obsessed with them than they were with her, or one another, analyzing every conversation and gesture, drawing out every joke into a longer and longer running gag, spending each moment either with one another or thinking about when next they would be with one another. Blue was perfectly aware that it was possible to have a friendship that wasn't all-encompassing, that wasn't blinding, deafening, maddening, quickening. It was just that now that she'd had this kind, she didn't want the other."

The character arcs and growth in all of these books have been so beautiful and interesting to read and it just got better and better in this book. There's something about the way this series is written that reminds me of the surprising and remarkable magic of Cabeswater. It's subtle, but addicting and you never know what to expect. Every word is twisted together with the next so beautifully. The descriptions, the metaphors, the prose. Ugh, amazing. I'm so excited for The Raven King now. I'm so glad I was able to come back to the series, read this book and love it so so much. There was part of me that was thinking should i give this a 4.5 stars because I'm not crazy fanatic about The Raven boys like so many others but I literally had no fault with this book. Not one. And it really deserves 5 stars.

Ah the end, so bittersweet.

After binge reading the entire series in a few days, I was both ready and not so ready to finally finish this book. I entered into it with a lot of feelings - excitement, sadness, trepidation and fear. I was so scared of flipping forward a few pages by accident and getting majorly spoiled and also of reading on as normal and the terrible thing we all know is going to happen, happen.

For the most part of this book I was absolutely enthralled. I was totally sucked in and I was really ready to see how everything turned out. Maggie has just such a wonderful way of writing that as the story twists and turns, you feel twisted and turned with it and as some bad things started happening to my favorite characters, I almost felt their pain and despair myself. I was a bit sad about Noah becoming more or less a non-entity in this one (and in Blue Lily, Lily Blue). Because of obvious reasons he's not around that much, but I did miss his puppy dog-type behavior and I didn't like Bad Noah at all. There was definitely a sense of peace near the end and I was relieved for him.

But okay, can we talk about RONAN AND ADAM KISSING CAUSE OMG I SQUEALED SO LOUD. I'm such a fangirl for these two in a way I haven't been for characters in a long time. Everything about them together just kills and brings me life at the same time. I love the subtleness of their body movements - they aren't obvious at all but we all know. AH LOVE LOVE LOVE.

I was really happy with Adam's progress in this book. I really felt he grew in this book, as he did in Blue Lily, Lily Blue as well. As I said previously he had really irritated me in the first two books but I managed to like him again in the last two books. I loved his growth in himself, his powers, with Ronan and with his own family.It was a real joy to read and I felt really proud of him!

For the ending of The Raven King, I will admit I was expecting more...of something. It felt a little bit anti-climatic to be honest for me, and I wasn't a complete raving mess at the end of it in the way I had expected it to be. I did enjoy it though for the most part and loved my reread of the other books too - a good experience all round.

3.5 stars

Shiver is the first Maggie Stiefvater book I read and the trilogy was one I loved and flew through. Because of this, it will always have a special place for me in my heart and I was happy to finally reread Shiver after a few years apart from it.

The book takes place in Mercy Falls where a 17-year-old girl called Grace was attacked by wolves when she was younger. Rather than being scared by them, Grace now feels a close affinity to the wolves that haunt the woods behind her house, in particular a young wolf with yellow eyes who seems to be her quiet guardian. Grace's guesses that the wolves are more than they appear prove correct when a young man with yellow eyes comes to her for help one night.

While Grace and Sam are VERY insta-lovey, there's a part of me that doesn't mind their relationship because they have technically known each other - even if it's just a soulful thing - for six years. I do wish there was a little bit of distance and more talking before kisses and bed cuddles to make things more realistic (as realistic as you can get in a werewolf story) but I don't have a whole lot of complaints. One thing that does annoy me though is when Sam and Grace are in the honeymoon stage, Grace literally ditches her friends and doesn't care about them. Her friend goes AWOL and she decides to wait a week before calling in to her - if I didn't talk to my best friend for more than a day, she'd be knocking down the door to make sure I was okay. Get your priorities straight Grace.

This book also has very absent parents but this is talked about in length by Grace and Sam so at least it's acknowledged and it's pointed out that it's abnormal and not right.

I do like that Stiefvater was able to create a nice twist on the typical werewolf story with the transformation being connected to the weather rather than the moon and it makes for some great scenes and beautiful descriptions. I am looking forward to continuing on with my reread and getting to know the rest of the pack better again as this book was very much focused on just Grace and Sam.