Maggie Stiefvater

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Raven Boys, a mesmerizing story of dreams and desires, death and destiny. The stakes have never been higher as it seems like either the end of the world or the end of dreamers approaches.

Mister Impossible

im not really loving it, also WHERE IS ADAM

matti horckmans

im so confused?

im not really loving it, also WHERE IS ADAM

Dani

** spoiler alert **
           Am I biased? Did I enjoy it less than the previous one because of the blatant absence of Adam? Or because of Ronan’s disregard for Adam’s undeniably wise advice? Or was it Bryde, his needlessly convoluted metaphors, a dark mirror of Ronan? In any case, I love this story as much as I did before, I just felt a bit trapped at times in the cobweb Bryde so laboriously put down. 

Honorable mention: Declan Lynch. The unsuspected hero. A rising star.

isabella

when i said i love villains i was lying

wtf is this?!?! i'm in so much pain right now. i know ms is laughing at us. this is the worst book for ronan stans.

chloé

i don't know if i like the dreamer trilogy but i do know i adore ronan lynch

Alexa M

Second read 10/30/2022: 
Rereading these to prep for book 3.
Second book syndrome as FUCK. This is very much a filler book which is why I docked my rating. Bryde was so annoying,  henceforth  Ronan was so annoying. Hennessy is my queen. Matthew is my baby. When I liked Declan more than Ronan... Maggie you better redeem yourself miss girl

 First read 5/26/2021:
4 stars 
i thought this was a solid second installment. i loved getting to see more of Matthew, but Bryde is so g-d annoyinnngg. this book made me get annoyed with Ronan and that is never a good thing grr. i know he will redeem himself in book 3 but like its so far away :/ anyways, that ending though - what!!

Jasmine

3.75 Stars
THAT ENDING WHAT THE FUCK!! I almost want to bump this up higher just for those last few chapters. Book 3 needs to give some serious answers because I'm not okay😭😭 Oh wow, so many mixed feelings about this book and I'd have a really hard time explaining most of it but that's also not to say that I didn't enjoy reading it. Also, that twist I never saw coming and it absolutely blew me away. I'm also worried about what this has unraveled from everything before. The second half really picked up for me, but out of all the books I read this month this was the hardest to get into and I forgot so much of Call Down the Hawk which didn't help. Mister Impossible was for me both extremely frustrating and wonderfully interesting. On a very disappointing note there is hardly any Pynch content and it hurts me deeply because one of the greatest parts of getting a Ronan centric story also meant more Pynch. I just hope book3 makes up for it. I love Ronan he's one of my favourite characters of the Raven Boys but it was disappointing to see this new less favorable side but I'm also still curious where it will all go. I need to see him happy in the end and this book made me very nervous for the future, book3 fix this for me!!

abby

Oh my god FUCKK I’m usually good at predicting storylines but that hit me like a fucking truck and had me doing that YouTuber clickbait thumbnail shock face w my hand covering my mouth those last few chapters 

Ronan and declan my freaking pookies 😭😭😭

Abi Baker

sigh....

i have zero doubts that some people will like this but the entire thing was completely forgettable for me. 
not sure i'll read any more maggie books after the last installment in this series.

marilynn

i feel like we overlooked something really important here, does matthew have organs? (was it answered and did my half asleep mind overlook it or...)

Elisa Bieg

This book took a long time to find its way. Far too long, honestly. 
Most of it is convoluted, pretentious, repetitive, and sorry to say, but truly: 
  emo
 to excess, to the point of being unfocused and void of identity.

The character arcs aren’t well developed so everything that happens feels random and pulled out of a hat (not to say other places). More specifically, this trilogy was presented as a Lynch brothers-focused, and especially Ronan-focused spin-off, but his character arc is the worst of the bunch: he is barely recognizable and also barely present, though he is mentioned a lot. The chapters featuring him are sorely lacking in... Ronan-ness.
(Declan and Matthew are slightly better, and their chapters are the only thing that made this book bearable.)
If Maggie wants us to believe that this is what, who, Ronan is now, she really should have done a better job at showing us how he got here.

Truly, this is such shallow work, it is heartbreaking. (In the midst of overwritten tomes, this is severely underwritten.)
The Raven Cycle was clever, well-thought-out, and with excellent characterization. This is a spin-off that is supposed to be once again character-centric but in which narration is so devoid of the characters’ personality that most of it just made me wonder WTF I was reading. 
Not to mention how flat and uninspired the dialogue is. What?? Maggie is the queen of sharp dialogue. WTH is going on?

(And before some of you come at me with swords drawn, ready to defend Maggie, saying that of course it’s different silly, it’s a different series and you need to judge it on its own merits, let me say this: I know it’s a new series, but a spin-off is by definition somewhat derivative so expectations of similar style and narrative thread are kind of justified, mes amies.)

The last 100 pages were better, the best of the book (even though some of the mind fuckery was slightly over the top and had me rolling my eyes.) But overall, this book just makes me wish Maggie had left these characters alone and just done something new, something with no connection and no expectations, something that would garner no comparison. Because once you know what an author can do, you expect it again — even if in new forms, new shapes, new stories. This is definitely not it. 

2 1/2 STARS

Chelsea van Rer

Maisie Smith

It did not actually take me 3 months to read. I started it, then got distracted by other books, and came back to read it today and literally finished it in one sitting. I’m literally about to go pace the room rn and walk off these feelings. WTF Ronan and WTF Adam and WTF Jordan and WTF is even happening. So good. Also Maggie’s writing never fails to inspire me. anyways, 10x better than the first book.

ayah ♡

reading this book was the worst decision i have ever made in my life

Aditi

I don't even know what to say about this one. Nothing happens until the last 100 or so pages and we're left with so many questions that I just don't think will be answered in the final book. The characters are still some of my favorites but I was very bored throughout the book, I didn't care about most of it. Would like to see Jordan and Adam interact in the next one, and that's all I'm hoping for.

Paige mandia 

i honestly have no idea what is happening no thoughts, head very empty. maggie stiefvator, you’re on thin ice u best fix this mess

isabella t mejias

Livia

i hope maggie knows that if she pulled that kind of shit again for the ending, i will go on a manhunt for her.

ℰ.

maggie stiefvater, the writer you are... i'm too stunned to speak !!!!!!!!!!!

Fraser Simons

She’s good at the endings. Gotta give her that. 

This is, I think, a good follow up to what ended up being one of my favourites. And I really liked the Raven Cycle books. I read them at exactly the right time in my life, both mood and genre wise. This book had to be a down beat after the previous, which somehow made me like Declan immensely despite thinking he was a douche before. 

Sooo much stuff happened and was introduced last book, it was always going to be like this. It’s a definite middle book. And, some of it feels a bit unearned, particularly with Bryde, but also in general, the novel feels a bit padded to me. What I mean by Bryde, is that typically each book rotates with a central character having their spotlight. But there’s not much to see of Bryde, and the big shit about everyone else, we pretty much already got. 

However. There are some good moments, you’d expect no less from these books. More than enough chapters with endings that are perfect and poignant. There’s more world building revealed too. It’s really just that only part of the ending hit home and it felt like we meandered to get there. It was never a chore, but neither was it the 1-2 day read the other ones were.

Granted, I’ve literally read like 600 books since the last book dropped as well, so I engage with books pretty differently now too. A bit more analysis on what did and did not work. I did notice, for instance, that with the YA prose I was pulled out of the text fairly often. I know these prose are very much in right now, but I really like vivid description and it does not require more words. More complex sentence structure and stronger verbs and you’re there… now I’m a bit more cultured and spoiled and want/need these things.

But, let’s not forget: it was very good.

OKAY…. i don’t even know what to say . feeling insane over this

okay actual mini review from the next day now. i read this in one day because i have an insane fixation on trc world which has not faded at all while reading the dreamer trilogy. so i’m so sad i have to wait awhile for the last book in the series, i’m like boiling over with thoughts on what might happen n if anyone is gonna get hurt . i do not trust the author lmao

but this was so good in my opinion!! it’s hard to explain everything that happened but it was so so incredibly to read and actually learn more about the dreamers. it was definitely intense and confusing, but you could describe ronan as both those things, so no surprise. ALSO I LOVED THEM! like ronan and hennessy were so funny and also really twisted with how they knew exactly where to step to hurt each other. when they had the moment in the car after everything though i was genuinely sniffling and smiling. 

ronan was insane though. genuinely.

JORDAN. JORDAN…. my beloved. she was my favourite character in this book i think. her relationship with art, herself, the world, hennessy, declan and matthew—i was obsessed with it all. i loved reading every chapter she was apart of. and the time she had in Boston with declan and matthew is something i could have just read a whole mini book about, i wanted it so bad to last longer and for declan to be happy and for matthew to follow her words and grow into the boy he is. 

speaking of declan… i’m obsessed with him more each book and each book i see snippets of myself in him too when i’m not even looking. it’s terrible. and matthew had me emotionally 99% of the time he was involved in anything. 

WHAT COULD HAVE MADE IT BETTER THOUGH WAS LITERALLY ANYTHING. ANYTHING FROM THE OTHERS. i missed them <3 gansey got one? mention to mock his accent and i kept waiting n waiting for an adam pov because i wanted one so bad and i felt so bad for him

Doménica Corral

Muchas veces pienso en lo limitante y extenso del lenguaje, el oxímoron de sentir y no poder explicar, el oxímoron de sentir y contarlo. Muchas veces pienso en lo admirable de encontrar palabras y transmitir lo que realmente se quiere, tener el poder de que el otro sienta justamente eso que buscas. Maggie escribe como...
Las palabras se dejan encontrar y escribir por Maggie. Las emociones se dejan sentir en su pluma. No puedo creer que esto exista y qué alegría que así sea.

Zoë Schaefer

The feelings this book gave me hurt more than when I was in the hospital for thyrotoxic crisis. Maybe because of that. Maybe because I know those dreamy episodes. God, Maggie, I love you. Thank you for this.

Mister Impossible

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