All the Crooked Saints, written by Maggie Stiefvater, follows three cousins, one of whom is the Saint of Bicho Raro. Beatriz, Joaquin, and Daniel (the Saint) have lived with their families ways for many years: pilgrims come, receive their first miracle, and while they are figuring out how to make the second miracle occur, the Soria family are not allowed to get involved.
These are not normal miracles that help you out in life. These are miracles that are supposed to teach you about yourself. They do this by being odd. It is always raining on one girl, twins are connected by a poisonous snake wrapped around them both, a man becomes a giant, etc. These are people’s darkness, and if a Soria tries to help, their darkness will manifest, and it will be far worse than a normal person’s darkness.
Now to the review.
Writing out this summary reminds me why I was intreged by this novel. I have also read The Wolves of Mercy Falls series and The Raven Cycle by Stifvater and knew going into it that this novel would likely be lyrical and very verse sounding, third person, and at least a little odd.
Honestly, the writing and story just didn’t work for me. The writing felt choppy and repetitive, the story felt like a myth that honestly went on with two much detail (this could also be due to it being an audio book), and the various premises of the story – the miracles and darkness – just never made sense.
I don’t know who I would recommend this book to. Maybe if you enjoy reading old fashion myths? I have enjoyed her other books (see this review), but I just didn’t like this one.
The narrator was good, however I wish he wouldn’t have done the entire novel in a Spanish accent. It takes place in Colorado with a family who hasn’t lived in Mexico for over a hundred years. And when he did the characters’ accents, the generally didn’t have a Spanish accent.
I did enjoy that this is a novel truly written in third person, which is getting a bit harder to find in popular stories.
Thank you for visiting, please leave your thoughts/comments below and any novels you would like to see reviewed on here!
(P.S. Sorry for the limited posts lately, a computer was being built! There should be an update on here at some point this month if it keeps working well.)
