First Chapter Thoughts: The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

I probably won’t be continuing this book. The first chapter (and prologue) of Raven Boys is certainly interesting, I’ll give it that – a teenager named Blue has spent her life haunted by a prophecy that if she kisses her true love, he will die. Then on St. Mark’s Eve, she sees a vision of somebody soon to die; a boy from the nearby academy, Aglionby.

I don’t fault anybody for being intrigued by this opening, but from the get go I have a lot of problems with the premise. First of all, it goes without saying in the book that Blue is straight, allosexual/alloromantic, and cisgender. I’m specifying all three here, because the entire premise would be more interesting if any of these were changed. Blue doesn’t even think about the concept of kissing a girl, and while part of me does wonder how the prophecy goes skewy, given that I know the rest of the main cast is male, I’m assuming that it’s not anything as interesting as ‘my true love isn’t a boy’, or even ‘they specified romantic love and I’m aro’.

The Raven Boys also telegraphs pretty clearly that the rest of the cast are going to be spoiled rich boys. No matter how that’s written, I can’t really get interested; there’s enough stories about those, and I get pretty tired of the dynamic of one girl surrounded by guys and a driving question of ‘which one is the REAL love interest’. Perhaps I’m being rough on the book, but ultimately, it just isn’t my cup of tea.

Sorry, Raven Boys. It just wasn’t meant to be.