If you aren't aware already, "The Raven Cycle" series by Maggie Stiefvater has been my favorite series for a while, despite not having finished it. The first book, "The Raven Boys" hooked me automatically with the writing, characters, and plot. Then, the second book, "The Dream Thieves," absolutely captured me. There was a deeper exploration of characters and intensity in the second book that raised my expectations exponentially.

Unfortunately, that meant "Blue Lily, Lily Blue" had the bar raised. While I loved getting into Adam's head and exploring the relationships between characters to a greater extent, the plot was what dragged this book to my least favorite in the series. It felt like a plot to extend the series into a four book series, rather than one that was ultimately ramping me up for the final book. This makes me worried that the ending of "The Raven King" is going to feel compacted since we won't have more room to include a lot of epilogue and time for the post-plot emotions to settle.

That's not to say that this book was boring; Stiefvater's writing still carries that perfect flow to it that draws me in, and the descriptions, emotions, and tone were consistently beautiful. I even found myself wanting to read more about the villain in this book, which is an incredible surprise to me as someone who disliked the villain's chapters in "The Raven Cycle," and wasn't a big fan of the Greyman's chapters, at first, in "The Dream Thieves."

There's plenty of heartfelt moments and important emotional development for each character, which is something I love about this series to begin with. While this book overall is not my favorite out of "The Raven Cycle," there are plenty of beautiful scenes and lines that make reading it worthwhile. I will highly recommend getting into this series, time and time again.