Where to even begin. 
 Blue Lily, Lily Blue is the third book in "The Raven Cycle." I've said in my reviews of The Raven Boys and The Dream Thieves that The Raven Boys was an introduction to the group dynamics of Noah, Gansey, Ronan, Adam, and Blue, and that The Dream Thieves is where the plot starts picking up, once you have all the introductory things out of the way. 
 Well, The Dream Thieves has nothing on Blue Lily, Lily Blue. 
 The writing stayed consistent, the same lovable whimsical style, but the plot itself intensified. Blue Lily, Lily Blue opens on one chilling fact: Maura is missing. Has been missing for a month now. She's underground, wandering, off on a quest to find Blue's father, and neither Persephone nor Calla can sense her. And if that's not enough, Greenmantle himself has made an appearance. In Henrietta. Gansey's anxiety is rearing it's head and Noah is becoming more and more dead and ghostlike. Things don't seem hopeless, necessarily, but Stiefvater makes it clear that she is raising the stakes. 
 One thing I really appreciate about this book (and the other two in the series) is that Blue, Ronan, Gansey, Adam, and Noah change. Their relationships with each other change. And, thankfully, in this one everyone is putting an effort into not fighting. Gansey even has a touching line where he says he can't even imagine how they were fighting so much over the summer, how he and Adam ever managed to be at odds. They all make a conscious effort to get along, which honestly was a relief because I don't know if I could handle all the stuff happening in this book and infighting in the group. It's just so much better when they all get along. 
 If Blue Lily, Lily Blue is any indication, The Raven King is sure to be a heart-pounding conclusion