All the Crooked Saints
Ratings14
Average rating4
15
Ratings14
Average rating4
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 area never quite what you expect.
Maggie Stiefvater has been called "a master storyteller" by *USA Today* and "wildly imaginative" by *Entertainment Weekly*. Now, with *All the Crooked Saints*, she gives us the extraordinary story of an extraordinary family--a masterful tale of love, fear, darkness, and redemption.
This description comes from the publisher.
Reviews with the most likes.
DNF at 100 pages. The writing was repetitive and trying to be whimsical but failing. After reading two full series from Steivfater, this just reads like a failed experiment in writing style. Stay in your lane.
2.5 Stars
Book 9 complete for O.W.L.'s 2019 Herbology- Plant on the cover
Pros:
- The writing style of this was superb. I loved the narrator and how he was telling everyone's stories. I listened to the audiobook and I definitely got Jane the Virgin vibes and I enjoyed the way the story was told.
Cons:
- There was not really a plot to this. It definitely focused on telling the stories of the three main characters and those around them. However, I did not feel like we were working toward anything or solving something. It was an odd feeling since I expect some kind of adventure or story with a book.
- I did not connect with the characters at all. Yes they had interesting lives and their stories were entertaining, but there was nothing that made me connect with them and really care about their story and what would happen to them.
Overall, this was a very middle of the road book. There was nothing overtly wrong about it, but there was nothing great either. There was nothing that made me want to know what was going to happen. I think if I had not read this for my O.W.L.'s it would have taken me much longer to read this. Every time I put it down, it was not like I had to pick up again right away.
More like 4.5. it took a bit to get into it partly because it was my first audio book and secondly it was a different kind of writing style then what I normally read, but once I was in I was invested. Not sure how I would describe this one, its multiple points of view, about a family of Saints and the Pilgrims who seek them out and its also about love and different ways you show it and about fears and hopes. If you give it a try I recommend the audiobook I thought the narrator fit perfectly.
“It could take forever to learn yourself.”
“All the Crooked Saints” was the Miracle I was wishing the Sorias to perform on me.
When the magic and complexity of Maggie's characters meet a small town in the Colorado region and the magic realism of Gabriel García Márquez, there is no way anything bad could happen.
I had already been in love with Maggie's writing since the Raven Boys saga, but her storytelling definitely found another level as she described the wilderness surrounding Bicho Raro and the miracles surrounded by owls that haunted and enchanted the Sorias.
“All the Crooked Saints” is a deep story, with a taste of magic, and a wonderful lesson in self-knowledge, music and miracles. There's no way not to fall in love with Maggie's dual characters, just as there's no way not to feel represented by at least one of the Sorias.
I highly recommend it for all lovers of magic, as well as for all those who find themselves lost and desolate under a gray cloud that just rains.
