Review: The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater

Summary

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…

My thoughts

Warning: immense swooning over fictional characters (why? Why aren’t they real people? They FEEL like real people! THEY ARE REAL TO ME! *sobs*) and general failing at putting into words how much I love this book ahead! [you better just (re)read the book instead of this review]

I already loved Ronan Lynch in the first book, even well back then when I read The Raven Boys for the first time. Probably because I always fall for those characters who mean trouble, the brooding, grumpy kind of characters who keep everything to themselves which makes your need to know more about them so much stronger. Ronan Lynch has a very special place in my heart, and as this is HIS book, it’s my favorite in the series, no contest.

When I read TDT for the third time, I didn’t even care about the plot anymore. All I wanted to do, all I concentrated on was getting into the head of this boy. Getting behind that invisible wall he built and hides behind, reveal every single detail about his secrets. And it still amazes me how I learn something new about him and by that love him even more than before, with each reread. The Raven Cycle is a series full of complex characters but Ronan is by far my favorite.

In the TDT we finally get that look into his head. There were so many parts in The Raven Boys were I wished to know what was going on in his head. And then TDT comes, which is HIS book because there is so much we get to read from his POV, and just breaks my heart. I feel so much for him and it just hurts to see him suffer. Those rare moments, when he was actually laughing (out loud) are my favorites in the book. Seeing him happy, even for only a few minutes, is something so precious to me.

It’s not just him though that makes this my favorite book in the series. There is a lot more to it that only adds up to one fucking perfect book.

For starters there is the prologue. I LOVE this prologue. It’s my favorite prologue ever. It introduces us to this overall theme of the book: secrets. And I’m still in awe about Maggie’s words, how she introduces it and even more so how she draws it all together at the end. (this prologue is also about Ronan Lynch, which makes me love it even more) All I wanted after reading that prologue is to turn all these characters’ secrets into the first kind of secret, secrets everyone knows about.

This is what makes rereading these books even more fun than reading them for the first time. There are so many secrets to uncover that you’ll only see when you already know what is going to happen, when you have the time to take a closer look at these kind of things. Of course, just like in the first book, there is also a lot of foreshadowing again. Maggie Stiefvater is a genius when it comes to that. She takes it so far that I start to get paranoid and analyze every single sentences, interpret (hopefully way too much into) every single one of them.

The Dream Thieves is just perfect because it does not only cover important topics like suicide, drugs, anxieties and others, but it also does it in a way that I’ve never seen before. Maggie introduces you into the life of characters who on the one hand have so many similarities and at first glance seem to be the same kind of characters, but on the other lead completely different lives just because there is this one important thing they don’t have in common, this one thing that makes a difference in dealing with the problem they have in common. Back in school I hated to analyze books, but had we read books like this one, that actually have to say a lot of important things between the lines, I would have loved it.

The Dream Thieves comes with everything that The Raven Boys had too: perfect character dynamics (THEIR FRIENDSHIP IS EVERYTHING), well developed, complex characters (did I mention how much I love Ronan Lynch?), a unique plot, heartache, FEELS, just everything you need and much more. Only that The Dream Thieves jacks it up which makes this book not only even better than The Raven Boys but it also hurts a lot more, intensifies the feels and makes me even more afraid of the ending of this series.

The Dream Thieves is a book I will never not think about, never not reread again. It is a rare thing that a book and its characters have such an impact on me like this one. I wish there were more books out there that are fucking perfect like this one/this series.