Blue Lily, Lily Blue

I really don't care if Blue, Gansy, Adam, Noah, and Ronan ever find their Raven King. In fact, I'd rather they didn't. Just keep giving me wonderfully painful stories about the Raven boys and their bittersweet friendship.

At the end of The Dream Thieves, Blue's mother had ventured into the dangerous and unpredictable realm of Cabeswater alone. Her sisters and Blue want to find her, but nothing is ever easy when it comes to Cabeswater. Meanwhile, Blue continues to struggle with her curse and her attraction to Gansy, and Adam comes to terms with his reality and his connection to Cabeswater.

And then there's Ronan. There can never be enough Ronan, though the majority of his story was told in the previous book when it was revealed that he is able to pull things from his dreams, making him the target of the cruel and ruthless man who had Ronan's father killed.

The only thing this book was sadly lacking was more Noah. The poor undead boy had very little to do, save to provide a kind of warning signal for Cabeswater's antics. Blue remains a bit sidelined as well, though less so than in the previous book, where I felt she existed only as a bouncing point for advancing the plot. Events and clues founds in Blue Lily, Lily Blue -- and the title itself -- imply that there is far more to Blue than just a conduit for amplifying psychic magic.

I don't fault the book for not giving more face time to these characters. There are so many of them, and each book has served to magnify a group of them. While one or more may play less of a role here, Stiefveiter firmly establishes their importance to... to whatever will come. And they are all so unique and intriguing in their own ways, that they are hard to forget.

But it's the relationship between Adam, Ronan, and Gansy that really and truly gets to me. The depth of their love for each other and their struggles to understand each other, and come to terms with who they are and what their friendship means. Gansy remains the glue that holds them together, and his stability serves as a buoy to the troubled boys, but Gansy has his own issues, that have been slowly unravelling every time he lets his Bruce Wayne-like mask dissolve. The trio, with Noah and Blue drifting along in the currents, is what truly makes this series my most favouritest YA series ever. All my feels. All of them.