Book Review: All the Crook Saints by Maggie Stiefvater

All the Crooked Saints

by Maggie Stiefvater

Reviewed by Reece

My rating: 4.2 stars

"Here is a thing everyone wants: a miracle.

Here is a thing everyone fears: what it takes to get one.

Any visitor to Bicho Raro, Colorado is likely to find a landscape of dark saints, forbidden love, scientific dreams, miracle-mad owls, estranged affections, one or two orphans, and a sky full of watchful desert stars.

At the heart of this place you will find the Soria family, who all have the ability to perform unusual miracles. And at the heart of this family are three cousins longing to change its future: Beatriz, the girl without feelings, who wants only to be free to examine her thoughts; Daniel, the Saint of Bicho Raro, who performs miracles for everyone but himself; and Joaquin, who spends his nights running a renegade radio station under the name Diablo Diablo.

They are all looking for a miracle. But the miracles of Bicho Raro are never quite what you expect."

All the Crooked Saints Let’s talk about it.

That first chapter, not interesting to me at all. I had to set it down and do something else and then come back to it that first chapter was so boring, the second chapter was a close second. I was like, is it ever going to get better? And I really like Maggie Stiefvater books, I really didn’t want to not finish it. (Plus, I had already bought it so . . .)

I pushed through those hard chapter and finally emerged to find something interesting. I didn’t really know what it was about yet, but it was better than those first to chapters! In fact, I wasn’t really sure what was happening for a while, it was a little unclear about what “Miracles” actually were, until a miracle was performed.

So, everyone has darkness inside of them, and this family the Sorias have the power to make your darkness physical and you can face it head on and vanquish it and be free of darkness. It was a little unclear on if you are free of darkness forever? Or if it is temporary? I think its forever. But the catch is the Sorias can’t help you defeat your darkness because then they will bring themselves darkness and a Sorias darknes is way worse than a regular person.

Oh, and owls love miracles, can’t get enough of them apparently. So, if you see an owl, a miracle is on the horizon for some one. But they don’t know who that someone is until they come and asks for a miracle.

A person’s darkness shows up in different ways, I won’t say all of them because it would spoil the book so,

There are the twins, they are connected by a serpent with two heads that are always fighting. Another girl can only repeat what is said to her. A priest has the head of coyote. One person (a baby) was turned into a dragon creature I think.

I did love the interaction of the family members and that they had their problems like normal people would.

Yeah, so this book has a lot of dynamic, and character building, and the story is really interesting. I loved the book, as soon as I passed those two chapters at the beginning.

I won’t spoil too much, but I don’t know how I feel about the books ending scene. Not the epilogue, that was cute, I liked the epilogue. But the last chapter kind of made me feel like Stiefvater was scrambling to end her book.

This book is a standalone and I think it should stay that way, it ended with loose ends all tidied up. No more questions. I didn’t feel sad that I finished the book, and I didn’t feel satisfied. I wasn’t really attached to the characters like I have been with other books or even her other books. I finished this and felt like “meh”.

Don’t get me wrong, this book was really interesting, and the way she wrote it is different but really fun to read. I’ve never read a book with the same writing style as this one had. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone.

It is short, so it didn’t take long to finish. So, if you’re looking for a quick but engaging read this one is nice.

Overall this book is pretty tame when it comes to romance, there is one kiss, and a character often thinks about if the skin on the inside of a character’s elbow are soft.

That cover though, absolutely beautiful. Once you read the book the owls and the roses makes sense. I love the way All the Crookes Saints looks on my shelf.