Review–The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle #2) by Maggie Stiefvater

By Megan Love Literature Art & Reason @meganm922
  The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle #2)   by Maggie Stiefvater   Summary: The second installment in the all-new series from the masterful, #1 NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author Maggie Stiefvater!
Now that the ley lines around Cabeswater have been woken, nothing for Ronan, Gansey, Blue, and Adam will be the same. Ronan, for one, is falling more and more deeply into his dreams, and his dreams are intruding more and more into waking life. Meanwhile, some very sinister people are looking for some of the same pieces of the Cabeswater puzzle that Gansey is after...

Genre: YA Paranormal/Fantasy
Release Date: Sept 17, 2013
Where to Buy: Amazon . Barnes and Noble . Scholastic
Add to Goodreads
Source: I purchased a copy of this book for Kindle.
Review:
Oh. My. Gosh.
I loved The Raven Boys, but The Dream Thieves totally blew me away. It was amazing. It was more action packed with higher stakes, but in the elegant and beautifully written way that is Maggie Stiefvater.
I remember thinking while reading The Raven Boys that the plot seemed so impossible to solve. How on earth can we already know that Blue will fall in love and kill her true love and that person will be Gansey? How on earth can the Blue I know fall for the Gansey I know? And how can they all survive this quest? How will this end? What could possibly happen next? And what does it all mean? This story is so deliciously unpredictable, magical, and absolutely complicated. I love it. I love the layers and beneath all of the plot layers are the character layers and their own motivations. This is such a good story.
I love the characters. I love how complicated and real they are. Their personalities just hit you in the face when you read the book and you just can’t help but love them for who they are. I feel their pain, hope, angst, and heartbreak.
If The Raven Boys felt more like a paranormal romance at first, if only on the surface, The Dream Thieves feels more like a fantasy. There’s more darkness and more power surging through Henrietta and the characters are less on a small supernatural quest and more on a path where their choices and loyalties are incredibly important. This isn’t just about Blue and the death of her true love. This is about everyone. The world. Everything.
And, wow, Maggie Stiefvater has this way of making characters fall for each other that just makes me melt. In her books, there’s barely a touch, an acknowledgement, or a whisper, but you just feel so much intensity and you get to watch these characters fall in love with each other’s whole soul and motivation and drive and everything. It’s so incredible.
I can’t give a detail of the plot of The Dream Thieves away because it feels wrong to, but it is very, very good. I loved it even more than The Raven Boys. I highly recommend this series, this particular book in the series, and basically anything by Maggie Stiefvater.

Quotes:
Kissing’s a lot like laughing. If the joke’s funny, it doesn’t matter how long it’s been since you last heard one.

All of us have secrets in our lives. We’re keepers or kept-from, players or played. Secrets and cockroaches — that’s what will be left at the end of it all.

“Whatever,” Ronan said. Which meant he’d do it. Gansey looked at Blue. “Happy, Jane?” Blue said, “Whatever.” Which meant she was.