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Book Review of All the Crooked Saints

All the Crooked Saints
ophelia99 avatar reviewed on + 2527 more book reviews


I got this through the Amazon Vine program to review. I am a bit torn on this one. I generally am a big Stiefvater fan and, while this book was written in her trademark writing style, I had trouble staying interested in it.

The book is about a family that can perform miracles, but really they can only start the miracle and it's up to the pilgrim who seeks the miracle to finish it. After they start the miracle they must avoid the pilgrim who requested it at all costs, if they don't they can take on the pilgrim's darkness which will lead to the unleashing of their own darkness.

It's an interesting concept and the book is written in a beautifully ambiguous way. You never really know if these pilgrims are actually magically changed or if their strange transformations are more metaphorical in nature. The whole story is very heavy on magical realism.

The problem for me was that the story wandered a bit too much and jumped around too much. The jumping around distracted me and I had trouble staying engaged. In the end I just didn't care much about the characters and their miracles. I also wasn't in love with the desert setting either.

Overall while this is definitely written with Stiefvater's beautiful, and somewhat ambiguously dreamy, writing style this just wasn't a favorite for me. I had trouble staying engaged in the story and ending being kind of bored. I much preferred the Scorpio Races and The Raven Cycle.