I was hoping to have a lot of thoughts coming out of this book, but everything dispersed from my brain at once in the wake of this story’s closing. Despite this, I will do my best to recollect those scattered feelings and opinions in this “review” (reaction? discussion? overall book talk?). (Let it be said, whatever this is is better suited for people who’ve already read the book, and less for those looking for a formal review of its contents.)
Started Reading – March 16, 2022
Finished Reading – March 27, 2022
Rating: 4 stars
After finishing the second installment of The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves, my mind was reeling, and I was filled with elation. While I couldn’t fully pin down the source of this joy, I did my best in this review. I was hoping to be left with similar feelings for this third book. I have to say that, while I did enjoy this one, it didn’t quite top the second one for me — but that’s not to diminish this book, because it was quite a treat, which I’ll now get into.
If you’ve read my post on The Dream Thieves, then you would know that my love for Adam was unwavering from the beginning, and Ronan and Gansey crept up on me out of seemingly nowhere. (I always appreciated Blue and Noah, though not to the extent of Mr. Parrish, my beloved.) I think the moment my love grew for Gansey was a particular scene in The Dream Thieves featuring him and Blue after a late-night drive. The dawn of my feelings on Ronan are harder to specify, but they were solidly positive since reading the second installment.
He [Ronan] had changed over the summer, and now Blue felt less unequal in the group. Not because she knew Ronan any better — but because she felt as if maybe Gansey and Adam now knew him less. He challenged them all to learn him again.
Blue Lily, Lily Blue, chapter 1
What I love this series for most is definitely the characters and their love for one another (though I do quite enjoy the plot too, which is mildly rare for me since I hardly ever know what’s going on in a piece of media). This character dynamic is described beautifully here:
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.
Blue Lily, Lily Blue, chapter 13
That is the dream, isn’t it?
Gansey, Blue, and What’s “Allowed”
Turning it back to specifically Gansey, witnessing the simultaneous growth and repression of Blue and his relationship was quite enjoyable, and it was his internal conflict on the matter that drew me in during the second book (what this says about me, I don’t know) and kept me gripped during the third.
In the rearview mirror, he caught Blue’s eyes by accident. Strangely enough, he saw his own thoughts reflected in her face: excitement and consternation. Casually, out of view of Ronan, making sure Adam was still sleeping, Gansey dangled his hand between the driver’s seat and the door. Palm up, fingers stretched back to Blue.
This was not allowed.
Blue Lily, Lily Blue, chapter 3
Many of the chapters from Gansey’s point of view repeatedly harp on the fact that this relationship is not allowed. The angst is through the roof, practically unbearable. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Late Night Drives Are a Love Language
I had first noticed this trend of escaping into car rides in the second installment, The Dream Thieves, though I failed to mention it in my review of the book.
She called Gansey.
“Blue?” he said.
Just his voice. Her heart tethered itself. Not completely, but enough to stop quivering so much. She closed her eyes.
“Take me somewhere?”
The Dream Thieves, chapter 51
At the time of my reading this, I was most thoroughly distressed because I had not yet felt the love for Gansey I know now (it did, however, develop in that very chapter). My loyalty was to Adam alone. To get a peek into my thought process at the time, here’s the note I left with that particular section:
Despite my previous distress, I got over it and grew to appreciate this sort of love language that is displayed so often. Here’s another example or two:
“You’ll remember this conversation later and say sorry to me,” Orla told Blue. “You forget who you are.” She whirled with as much grace as she could manage on her long legs and massive shoes.
Gansey was too gracious to inquire after the source of the argument.
“Get me out of here,” Blue said.
Blue Lily, Lily Blue, chapter 13
Blue called Gansey.
He picked up at once. “I wasn’t sleeping.”
“I know,” she replied. “Come get me.”
Blue Lily, Lily Blue, chapter 26
“Are you waiting out here for me?”
“No,” said Ronan. “Parrish and I are going for a drive.”
“We are?” Adam asked.
“Good,” Gansey said. He was relieved that they would be doing something, not thinking about the headmaster, not wondering if Gansey was, after all, behaving like a Gansey. “I’ll see you later.”
Blue Lily, Lily Blue, chapter 19
Gansey, too concerned with the idea that he might be suspicious, entirely disregards others’ suspicious behavior, which leads us to my next point.
Ronan and Adam
Adam […] rubbed the backs of his hands. Every winter they chapped hideously despite his best efforts, and they had already begun to dry.
Blue Lily, Lily Blue, chapter 12
He retrieved the object and held it up under the feeble interior cab light. It was a small white plastic container. Adam twisted off the lid. Inside was a colorless lotion that smelled of mist and moss. Replacing the lid with a frown, he turned the container over, looking for more identifying features. On the bottom,
Ronan’s handwriting labeled it merely: manibus.For your hands.
Blue Lily, Lily Blue, chapter 15
What is there to be said about this event and these two that hasn’t been said already? The connection between these characters is gradual and lovely, laced with quiet care amongst the day-to-day interactions. We get to see Ronan’s vulnerability most when revealed to Adam, and I consider that a gift.
“Why here? Why do you come here to do it [dream]?”
Voice toneless, Ronan said, “Sometimes I dream of wasps.”
Adam imagined it then: Ronan waking in Monmouth Manufacturing, a dream object clutched in his hands, wasps crawling in his bedsheets, Gansey unaware in the other room. No, he could not dream wildly in Monmouth.
Blue Lily, Lily Blue, chapter 20
This is already a large confession from Ronan, but it doesn’t stop there.
He studied his hands and admitted, “I’ve dreamt him a box of EpiPens. I dream cures for stings all the time. I carry one. I put them in the Pig. I have them all over Monmouth.”
Blue Lily, Lily Blue, chapter 20
And not only does this link provide a place for Ronan to be modestly open, but it’s a safe space for Adam to be seen and understood in a way that others (Gansey) can’t fully comprehend.
He [Adam] admitted, “Some.”
“A lot,” Ronan translated, and he was right, because, strangely enough, Ronan knew a great deal about how Adam worked. It was possible Adam had always been aware of this but had preferred to consider himself— particularly the more unsightly parts of himself — impenetrable.
Blue Lily, Lily Blue, chapter 29
Beyond this, we get more angst, this time relating to frightening dream-turned-reality things, but also jovial, juvenile rides in shopping carts — what more could a reader ask for?
As Gansey shut the door behind him, he heard Adam say, “I don’t want to talk,” and Ronan reply, “The fuck would I talk about?”
Blue Lily, Lily Blue, chapter 43
See? They understand each other.
Blue and Ronan
What took me a bit by surprise (though I loved every minute second of it) was the trust and caring friendship slowly, slowly solidifying between Ronan and Blue. We see the first instance of it in the very first chapter when he grabs her to keep her from falling:
Ronan’s arms were still locked around her; she felt them quivering. She didn’t know if it was from muscle strain or worry. He had not even hesitated before grabbing her.
I can’t let myself forget that.
Blue Lily, Lily Blue, chapter 1
We see proof of that bond pop up again towards the end of the novel.
Suddenly, she felt arms around her, yanking her away from the lake’s edge. The arms around her were trembling, too, but they were iron tight, scented with sweat and moss.
“It’s not real,” Ronan told her, voice low. “It’s not real, Blue.”
Blue Lily, Lily Blue, chapter 48
It’s kind of humorous that the examples of their friendship are just moments of human decency, but that’s kind of a lot to ask from Ronan.
[…] she said, “You know, you’re not such a shithead.”
Blue Lily, Lily Blue, chapter 48
“No,” Ronan replied, “really I am.”
The Greenmantles
“My name” — the man swept out a big swath of Ronan’s bad grammar with the edge of an eraser and used the space to replace it with efficient letters of his own — “is Colin Greenmantle.”
Blue Lily, Lily Blue, chapter 9
I must say, I very audibly gasped at the new information disclosed at the end of chapter nine: Greenmantle is in town, and he’s Murderous Latin Teacher 2.0. However, as the story went on, my interest in Colin dwindled tremendously and was redirected toward a different character: Piper Greenmantle.
“I hope that silence means you are getting the crackers out.” Greenmantle stepped into the kitchen. Cracker-fetching was not, in fact, the cause of Piper’s silence. She stood in the dining area with a pissy look on her face and pink yoga pants on her legs and a gun pointed to her head. […]
[…] Greenmantle fetched the crackers and a plate and a knife from the knife block and assembled them in a reasonable way. Squinting one eye closed, he held up a piece of cheese. “Do you think this is the right size? Should I slice it thinner? These are the crackers we have to go with it.”
“That piece is the size of an entire udder,” Piper said.
Blue Lily, Lily Blue, chapter 14
My affinity for Piper over Colin remains, as it should, throughout the rest of the book.
Does Anyone Know What’s Going On? I (Sort Of) Do.
Since I mentioned enjoying the plot earlier in this post, I find it necessary to at least briefly touch on it.
Gwenllian is quite a character, and her relevance to the shift of the story was…surprising. I’ve often heard fans of this series saying they can never follow the plot and determine what’s going on, and while I wouldn’t include myself in that camp, I must say that I can at least see where they’re coming from. And if I’m being perfectly honest, my understanding of the dreamers did get a little muddled (my brain just doesn’t have the capacity, it seems), but I grasped it a bit more with the funky little plot twist in the final pages.
This series is a win in that, though there is quite a lot of focus on the characters, it also has a very prominent and compelling plot. Since my qualifications for a book that I’ll likely enjoy is just well-developed characters, this series exceeds my baseline desires, and, in this case, I can’t imagine having too much of this good thing.
Though this post is more in-depth than the one I did on The Dream Thieves, it does not quite surpass the second installment for me. I can’t exactly quantify what causes me to favor the previous book, but I think it has a bit to do with preferring the Greywaren plotline with Kavinsky mentoring (I use this word loosely) Ronan over that of caves, mirrors, and Gwenllian. I’m definitely not knocking this book or its plot, though! It’s a very solid four stars in my eyes.
What are your thoughts on this series, and Blue Lily, Lily Blue specifically? Do you like this series/book? Why, or why not? Which book and/or character(s) are your favorite? I’d love to hear your thoughts below!
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