This was an interesting read. It was a strong book, and at sometimes a little confusing, but the message at the heart of the story is great!

A truly majestic novel looking at feminism, queerness, and 1950s American culture. But with dragons. While the middle dragged a bit for me personally, this book was a true triumph of story telling and I recommend it to all

Unfortunately I couldn’t get into this book. It looks interesting and enjoyable and maybe I’ll pick it back up one day!

Thanks to Netgalley and Doubleday Books for the ARC of this! I'm catching up some backlog ARCs so I listened to the audiobook from my library as well as reading from the ebook.

This was much more family drama centered, character driven, within the context of speculative fiction than I would typically enjoy, but overall I liked it. The main character, a young girl growing into her teenage years, deals with the fallout from her aunt disappearing as a dragon and leaving her child behind, followed by her mother dying, and her father being a terrible parent. This leads to her struggling to better herself while taking care of her young sister, who has always been her sister, of course she has, because we don't talk about the shameful topic of dragoning. Interspersed with what feel like scientific reports about dragoning, this was entertaining.

In a day 1955 over 600,00 women spontaneously turn into dragons... and society does all it can to forget about it.

I don't usually go for magical realism, but I really enjoyed this one.

DNF @ 21%

This follows a woman from childhood as she recounts the effects of "The Mass Dragoning" on her life. While I'm intrigued by the concept, its written from a retrospective angle, which makes the story feels passive to me.

I can't begin to describe how beautiful this book was. I raged, I cried, I hoped. This was so wonderful and powerful. Barnhill's dragons are a wonderful metaphor for women who have found that they deserve more and better.

Extremely well done book that will draw you in from the first few pages. Loved the story and how deep it goes.

In 1955, thousands of women around the US turned into dragons. It’s not something we talk about though. Alex, whose aunt dragoned but whose mother did not, grows up confused in this world created by the event. As her sister Beatrice shows a concerning interest in dragoning, Alex finds herself in the role of jailer and parent, desperately trying to enforce social mores she doesn’t understand.

1950s housewives turning into dragons because of feminine rage is an amazing premise. And this would have been an amazing short story. As a novel, there’s not enough substance here. Plenty of reviews already address the lack of intersectionality and the reductive approach to feminism, so I’ll content myself with addressing the narrative and my frustrations as a reader. Why that moment in time in 1955? What happened to the dragons? Throughout the book, there are more events that transpire without apparent reason or justification, and it made for a maddening read.

An empowering book that reflects a lot of injustices of our time. I have recommended this book many times at the bookshop I work at.

I appreciate feminists trying to use fiction to explore and teach feminist ideas, but this is one of those cases where the intention might be good but the end result is a shallow explanation of feminism.

This book was just not for me. Some people may enjoy it, but the only other thing I’m going to say is that this book could’ve been a wonderful short story.

This book really hit home, there were a lot of really incredible messages within this wonderful story.

I adored the concept; I adored the metaphors and the magical realism; I especially adored the purpose of this book, but I just can’t help but feel like it wasn’t very well done. Considering how much I love feminist, dystopian, not-quite-Margaret Atwood -like books, this should’ve been right up my alley, but it just didn’t quite strike home.

The narrative was interesting— the historical journal of a child during this occurrence, and of course I love a good magical realism world. A mass-dragooning? Count me in. But the representation and portrayal of characters felt flat. I didn’t feel connected, or like there was any reason to care. I just can’t help but thing this could’ve been better.

Thank you to Netgalley for the advanced copy of this book!

A rollicking feminist tale set in 1950s America where thousands of women have spontaneously transformed into dragons, exploding notions of a woman’s place in the world and expanding minds about accepting others for who they really are.

This is a book about dragons, about women, about freedom, about transformation, and on and on. While the title of the book certainly grabs you, it can be a bit misleading. I found some parts repetitive and unnecessary. The premise is original and the historical aspect was interesting. I think having a character other than Alex as the POV would have been better for the pacing of the book. There were definitely times I thought the story could end and be completed (yet I had many more pages to go).

This book aired on the side of being preachy and unsubtle in a way that destroyed the world of the book. I finished reading it because I wanted to see how it would end and where it would take me with the characters. I had a lot of hope and the story had a lot of potential, but it fell flat in too many places to be a favorite. This book may be great for some, but not everyone.

This book has been on my TBR list for a while, so I figured it might be a good one to tackle finally, especially given how I've been feeling about the world politically and socially at the moment. While this book did occasionally rile me up with some of the injustices and inequities, it was a much more relaxed read than I had been expecting, largely due to the lectures/textbook pages/interviews that come between chapters. I think it was also a clever way to highlight that, even during times of great change, a lot of people will try to keep the world going the exact same way as it was, often even trying to ignore the change in an effort to make it go away. Their efforts to prevent and hold off change turn into an insidious creeping effort to prevent progress, but in the end, progress tends to win out.

Okay enough with the philosophy stuff and on to the book review. So the things I loved: the narration style, especially how it progressed from Alex as a young child so confused by the changes in the world around her and especially by the fact that the adults in her life won't explain what's happening. Her frustration was so visceral and hit me hard, taking me back to my own childhood memories of not understanding some big scary things in the world and dearly wanting someone to just explain it in a way I could understand instead of telling me "you'll understand when you're older." I loved watching Alex grow throughout the book, her fraught relationships with the adults around her, the heartbreak that comes with childhood and growing up and loss, and her yearning to learn and know more about almost everything. I especially loved Beatrice, wild and exuberate and untetherable as a cloud, and the care and love Alex felt for her was so evident and raw at times, especially once her dad off-loaded Bea's care directly on to Alex (if ever I could have reached into a book and pummeled a character, it would've been Alex's dad. Just the idea of putting your teenage daughter in a crappy apartment and telling her to take care of herself and a literal child made me absolutely livid. And the fact that stuff like that happened to real people in the past (and probably even now in some cases) just makes me want to turn into a dragon and burn the world down). Also Alex's anger, at her mother for disappearing for a while, at her aunt for stepping in to help take care of her but not being her mother, at her father for being just the absolute worst throughout most of her life, at her teachers and principals for trying to stifle her creativity and personality, and at the world itself for trying to stick everything they didn't like in a box and forget about it. But I especially felt her anger after the dragons returned and her aunt was once again back in her life. That betrayal, that loss, that pain at having lost her aunt once, then having lost her mother, then her father virtually abandoning her with a young child to take care of, the world constantly beating her down and trying to make her fit their ideals, and then the dragons return and her aunt seems almost blithe about the things Alex had to go through, mostly alone. I know part of her aunt's behaviour was probably an effort to try and push through her own sense of guilt and loss and an urge to help Alex and Beatrice even if Alex said she didn't want the help. But I understood Alex's feelings of anger and betrayal that this person she loved had left her and now was suddenly back and almost wanted to act as if what she'd done was fine. I liked getting to see a lot of the dragons having to deal with the messes they left when they dragoned and left their old lives behind. I understand why most of them left and why they probably felt like leaving was the right thing for everyone, but seeing that collateral damage from even good-intentioned choices was important.

And now the things that I didn't quite love but still liked: the slower pace of the novel itself. While the overall premise of the book made me think everything would be big and fantastical, I actually liked that things were smaller and more focused on the minutiae of life despite the strange goings on. The idea that the government and society itself would try to ignore and paste over a mass dragoning of women didn't surprise me at all; I wasn't exactly expecting that to be the case when I started the book, but it made a lot of sense within the context of the story. Even now, with all our technology capturing things live and unfiltered, there are still plenty of people who want to ignore or cover up obvious problems in our world instead of facing them head-on. I will say that the last third of the book had me hooked pretty well and kept me reading long past when I should've gone to bed, but the slow build at times didn't always leave me eager to pick up the story again. But overall, I did enjoy the slower pace because it fit so well with the themes and feel of the book, despite my initial expectations.

So if you'd like a literary novel with some fantasy elements, some biting commentary on society, and girls and women who march to the beat of their own drum and thumb their nose at society's expectations, give this book a try. I found it quite cathartic at times. And oh how I wish I could turn dragon and fly away from things at time.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me early access to this book in exchange for an honest review.

I’m a little surprised by just how much I loved this book. It’s got so much going on in it, and yet it’s also a very simple story about growing up.

The writing makes you feel the incandescent rage the characters feel at the injustices, the obtuse and petty slights piling up over time, and at the same time doesn’t avoid the question of whether or not acting on those feelings is selfish. On what must be given up in exchange, and if it’s worth it. And it has me seriously wondering what choice I’d make if this was my world.

I would agree with some other reviewers this is a divisive book. I DNFed unfortunately, which is rare for me. There is A LOT to like and unpack here, but I think it is a book to read when you’re at a specific time in your life.

I loved this book (although I don't appear to be in the majority here). Thank you so much for sending it to me!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me free access to the digital advanced copy of this book.