All the Crooked Saints by Maggie Stiefvater
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Well, I don’t know what I was I expecting, but it wasn’t this. And yet, when I was given it, I loved it! Beatriz and Pete and Joachin and Daniel, and the Pilgrims, and the Soria’s, and the history, and mystery, and mysticism, and the feels! Everyone is looking for a miracle from the Saint of Bicho Raro, but you can’t always get what you want. Sometimes, you get what you need.
Audiobook review:
An audiobook experience is often different to reading a book yourself – usually in a good way. It takes longer to listen to someone else read than to ‘inhale’ the book under your own steam. I find that I spend longer with the characters in my head. And the narrator usually brings a deeper dimension to the reading – an accent, an interpretation, depth.
So it is with All the Crooked Saints. Thom Riviera takes Maggie’s words and expands them, illuminates them, broadens them. As an Australian reader, it’s unlikely that I would have read the narrator’s voice in anything other than Strayun, so it was a welcome experience to hear a Latino accent coming out of the speakers, and be instantly immersed from the very first words in a culture that is largely unknown to me. Stiefvater’s characterisation is always top-notch, and the diverse range of personalities and stories is woven together intricately and carefully, creating a story that is both unusual and universal, and the 20th century setting adds both nostalgia and a feeling of currency, as if it wouldn’t not be a huge leap for this to be occurring right now in the Colorado desert.
A Stiefvater book is always a beautiful and delightful learning experience for me. She is thorough, and knows just how much to put in, and what to leave out. Tight, emotional, and compelling. Loved it.
Miffy reviews... 