The Raven Boys

The spirit belongs to Richard Gansey, a rich, earnest student at Aglionby, the local private school, who is obsessed with finding Glendower, a legendary Welsh king said to lie sleeping somewhere along a line of energy that runs through the hills. His friends are Ronan, angry and grieving; a quiet scholarship boy with a difficult home life; and Noah, quiet and strangely faint. Blue wants nothing to do with raven boys, but she is drawn into their search.

What makes the book special is not the plot, which builds slowly, but the people. Stiefvater writes friendship beautifully, with sharp humour and real tenderness, and each character has secrets that unfold gradually. The supernatural elements are eerie rather than flashy: a forest where time behaves strangely, tarot readings, a buried past. There is some violence and a dark discovery late in the book, handled without gore.

Patient readers are rewarded with a story they will not forget, and most go straight on to The Dream Thieves. Be warned that the ending opens more questions than it answers, which is part of the pleasure. About 416 pages in the Scholastic paperback.