The Raven King (The Raven Cycle #4) Maggie Stiefvater April 26th 2016 Scholastic ******Will probably contain spoilers for this book and the whole series just as a heads up****** I'm not going to try and write a normal review for The Raven King, because quite frankly I don't even know if I'm capable of doing proper reviews any more, and this is not the book or the series where I want to figure that out. That, and my love for this series transcends that of something which I can properly review, as I am completely biased and I *will* fight people about these books. On that note, this is also won't even entirely be about The Raven King on its own. Rather, it's a chance for me to go on and on and on and on and on about how much I love these books and Blue and those darn boys. My biggest fear about The Raven King, as is always the case with final books in a beloved series, was that it wouldn't be a good or fitting ending. I did not need to be worried. Rather than reac...
Non Pratt
March 6th 2014
Walker Books
A boy. A girl. A bump. Trouble.
Hannah’s smart and funny ... she’s also fifteen and pregnant. Aaron is new at school and doesn’t want to attract attention. So why does he offer to be the pretend dad to Hannah’s unborn baby?
Growing up can be trouble but that’s how you find out what really matters.
Okay, first things first, is that or is that the best cover you've ever seen for a book about teen pregnancy. I know I keep going on about it, but seriously, I love it. It's the only cover for a book about teen pregnancy that has ever made me want to actually read the book because it is (usually) the one thing that comes up in contemp/realistic YA that I pretty much refuse to read about. A little bit because Personal Reasons and a little bit because I always just assume that they're either going to be all smooshy and romantic and blah (I can handle smooshy romance on its own, but smooshy romance + babies?! Nope) or that they're going to be super preachy and annoying. I always think that the whole point is going to be about teen pregnancy rather than about the people actually involved. Also, pregnancy and babies are just not what I am about. At all.
But I felt like Trouble would not be those things. And I think if you're like me, and you're not at all into books about teen pregnancy, you shouldn't let that put you off reading this book at all. Yes, it's about a fifteen year old girl who gets pregnant and a boy who agrees to pretend to be the dad. But it's also about friendship and family and loss and healing and it's just really, really good. Like it says on the cover, it is funny and smart and touching and I loved it.
The book is told from alternating perspectives which I almost always enjoy, and I think it was probably the best way for Hannah and Aaron's story to be told. Also, it wasn't like they had a chapter each or anything. It would alternate between them within the chapters, which I liked, and also a lot of the passages were quite short so it felt quite fast-paced, I guess? Also I didn't have any trouble telling them apart and they both had their own distinct voices, which was good because sometimes dual perspective books can get really confusing.
I also thought that Hannah and Aaron were really great characters, and I loved their relationship. To be honest, when I read the blurb and heard about this book I just kind of assumed that it would be a romance, but it isn't. Well, there might be the potential for that in the future, but it's not what this book is about. Aaron and Hannah end up being best friends, and it's much more about how they sort of end up keeping each other going and supporting each other and I was pleasantly surprised by this development. I've read so many books about wonderful friendships already this year I'm so happy. And I really liked getting to find out about Aaron's backstory and his guilt and to see how he worked through that alongside Hannah being pregnant and trying to figure that all out.
I will say that I think that the ending maybe felt a bit rushed, but the rest of the book was really well paced and it's the sort of book that you don't want to put down. And it was really nice reading a British book again. It's kind of irrelevant, I know, but I haven't read one for a while and it was nice getting to read a book set in the UK again. It always feels a lot more realistic than reading US contemporary stuff, but that's probably just because I am British and as such can see myself/my friends/family/school etc in British stuff much more. I wonder what books like this and TV shows like My Mad Fat Diary seem like to Americans... Sorry, that's just incredibly irrelevant now.
Anyway, Trouble was not trouble at all to read (yeah, yeah, that was terrible I know) and is a really great, funny, touching book about friendship and family and growing up and those sorts of things. You should read it, is the point.
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