Some of my favorite moments in The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater...

Sean: "Instead I remember him as he was before the race: afraid. I won't make that same mistake."

Puck: "She is my are and my best friend, and I keep waiting for something bad to happen to her, because I love her too much."

Puck: "I didn't actually realize there wasn't much to the island until a few years ago, when I started reading magazines."

Puck: "Actually, I know different. And it's still enough."

Puck: "The kitchen has turned into the small, yellow place that it becomes at night when the darkness outside presses it smaller."

Puck: "I add, hurriedly, "Sir," because Dad once said that saying "sir" makes gentlemen out of ruffians."

Puck: "Mum liked to say that some things happen for a reason, that sometimes obstacles were there to stop you from doing something stupid."

Sean: ""You look in fine spirits." "Do I?" "Well, your face looks like it remembers a smile," Holly Says."

Puck: ""Don't expect them to be friendly to you, Puck," Peg Gratton tells me, as if Elizabeth's not there. "A lot of them consider a girl on the beach bad luck. They won't be happy to see you." I press my lips together. "I don't need them to be friendly. Just need them to let me go about my business." That would be a kindness," Peg says."

Puck: "Because it doesn't matter how brave I've been or how brave I will be. It only took a casual handful of minutes to convince everyone here that I don't belong on the beach."

Puck: "You sure don't like to do anything the easy way, do you?" "I didn't know," I start truthfully, "that it was the hard way when I started on it."

Sean: "But that's part of this, the not knowing. The surrender to the possibilities beneath the surface."

Puck: "I had thought, for some reason, that being one of the riders in the Scorpio Races would get me a bit more respect, but it's ever surprising, the things that don't change."

Sean: "Corr can hold a thousand things in his heart and reveal only one of them on his face, like he did earlier today. He is so very like me."

Puck: "I'm careful to close the gate as I found it, because I'm aware it's the worst crime on a farm to do otherwise."

Sean: "Her expression is fierce and uncompromising, full of the intrepid bravery of a small boat in an uncertain sea. Above us is the same full moon that lit the ocean all those nights ago."

Puck: "I think, possibly, that this island has begun to get its hooks into him, and this makes me like him even more. Anyone Thisby chooses to seduce can't be half-bad."

Puck: "But mostly I think about the way he looks at me - with respect - and i think that's probably worth more than anything."

Sean: "May the ocean keep our brave."

Sean: "Do you know what to wish for now?" I swallow. I have no wishing-shell to throw into the sea when I say it, but I now that the ocean hears me nonetheless. "To get what I need."

Vocabulary:

capaill uisce

uisce

guillemots

When I picked up this book I was expecting it to be good. What I wasn't expecting was to be so highly invested in Puck. I felt like she was a fresh Third Mate on an oil tanker for her first rotation. I wanted her to succeed - so, so badly - and she did. When Sean was introduced I wanted him to not be a pushover trying to get the girl - and he wasn't.

I liked this book but, more importantly, I liked the people in it!

I enjoy YA but, this, this book could be enjoyed by anyone.