I've tried a couple of books by this author now and I think she just might not be for me.

This is supposed to be her first adult book, but the main character was a child, teenager or college student for most of the book. It didn't feel very adult to me.

I guess that for me, there didn't seem to be much subtlety in the book. Women are oppressed! They turn into dragons to escape oppression! (But sometimes come back.) Should I turn into a dragon? Why do I/don't I want to?

I got about 50 pages into the book and it hadn't grabbed me. I didn't like the main character's mother, who seemed like her whole deal was to deny her worth so that she could fit a "traditional housewife" role. None of the men in the book that I'd met so far were worth meeting- they were there to show how horrible men are to women. And I'm not sure why the book was set in the 50's except that it was a time where women did not have a lot of rights.

I also just don't get how over half a million women in the USA alone can change into dragons, killing quite a few people along the way, and no one ever talks about it or acknowledges that it even happened. It felt like a very American book, very white too. Not many folks of color, not anything happening outside of small town America.

The writing was decent but I just didn't end up caring about what happened next. I feel like I've read this story before. Other reviewers have mentioned that this might have been better as a short story, and I think I'd agree.

I COULD NOT LOVE THIS BOOK MORE!

This was such a powerful and profound book. I both read and listened to the audio of it and was moved both times. The character development, the incredibly original story, everything was like a chef's kiss.

Maybe it was the time in my life when I read it, as I was going through upheaval but this book spoke to me on so many emotional levels.

“You will tell people that you did not raise me to be an angry woman, and that statement will be correct. I was never allowed to be angry, was I? My ability to discover and understand the power of my own raging was a thing denied to me. Until, at last, I learned to stop denying myself.”

WHEN WOMEN WERE DRAGONS is a historical speculative fiction novel, imagining a world where hundreds of thousands of women suddenly transform into dragons in the U.S. in the 1950s. Interspersed within the narrative of the main character Alex is a history of so-called dragoning before this time and scientific explorations into its causes and machinations.

I liked this book, and I think it could have gone further. Though the premise is explosive, the execution is slower, softer, more intimate; it’s about a girl and her mother, the aunt she mourns the loss of, the cousin who becomes her sister, and the feeling of family that often eludes her. I thought the setting was powerful: there’s a lot to say about the conservatism of the era, the persistence of racism and xenophobia, the suppression of anything with a whisper of communism, the ongoing silencing of women and queer people, and I liked the parallels the author drew. From that context, it’s hard not to enjoy dames becoming fire-breathing monsters, incinerating their abusive husbands and bosses, razing their workplaces to the ground, and freeing themselves of the oppressive constraints of post-war conservative gender norms. It’s a not a phenomenon exclusive to cis women either.

But after all that, many of the dragons seemingly just return to normal society! They come home, they clean, they get jobs, they try to get their husbands back. Ladies! Fly out and find a new home! Establish an anarcho-syndicalist nation run by massive lizard lesbians! I found the trajectory of the story wanting, with a very white lady second-wave feminism vibe despite the author’s clear intentions. Perhaps she was aiming for a more realistic picture of this dragon-filled world. I did very much enjoy the vision of sapphic polyamorous dragon aunties who spend their days making bricks, baking bread, and reading books; you can sign me right up for that.

There’s a lot of beautiful writing here about anger and discovery and loneliness and memory and the infinite variety of relationships between women. Something about it just didn’t totally come together for me. A powerful book nonetheless. Thanks to Doubleday Books for the eARC.

Content warnings: sexism, misogyny, death of a parent, parental abandonment, cancer, grief, homophobia/lesbophobia

Magical realism or historical fantasy isn’t a genre that I reach for often, but I simply couldn’t pass up Kelly Barnhill’s venture into adult lit. Having absolutely loved The Witch’s Boy, I knew from the get-go that I can bet on it’s magnificent lyrical prose and hard-hitting passages. I was not disappointed.

When Women Were Dragons is a fierce and unapologetic feminist manifesto wrapped in a gentle yet unflinching prose. Set in 1950s, after the first mass Dragoning (a world wide event during which hundreds of thousands of women shapeshifted into fire breathing Dragons and took to the skies, oftentimes after having consumed their unfortunate husbands), it’s a story filled with relevant and important themes and messages. Alex is a young girl who just lost her mother to cancer. Her aunt was one of the women who Dragonned, and so she is now the sole caregiver to her cousin (Bea), mainly because her father couldn’t be bothered to care for them anymore, now that he started a new family with his mistress.

Alex’s life is full of moments of utter heartbreak. She is ambitious and determined to study math, she does not want to settle for the kind of life her father and other men in her life would have her live. This girl is a fighter, and she’ll do whatever it takes to escape the shackles of patriarchy.

And yet, and yet. The punches keep coming and she faces more than just one obstacle - all of them painful, all of them heartbreaking. But there is also hope and sense of support from other women, a nearly magical thread of understanding and mutual uplifting that only women can offer each other. And it’s a phenomenal thing to witness. I loved the fierce women of this story, for they were all dragons in one way or another. I loved the librarian, I loved Bea, I loved the old Polish lady who called Alex “zabko” and offered her little gifts and treasures.

I loved this book in a way I loved only Lessons in Chemistry, and if you enjoyed that one, you’ll love WWWD, too.

Thank you to Netgalley and Doubleday Books for sending me a copy of this book! All opinions are my own!

For starters, I absolutely loved the style of this book. It's like a historical memoir, and that just adds so much to the story and the intrigue of it all. The writing style makes everything so much more believable and really grounds you in the "reality" of it all. I loved the way we got to see the world, but because the narrator is so young for most of it, I ended up wanting more information about the world and the mysterious dragons.

I really loved the themes of feminism and identity. There was so much depth to the healing and growth throughout the book, and I loved revealing the parallels between the book and our own reality. It's a book that really makes you stop and think about the world and what you want from it, how you can shape it, and your place within all of it.

I do wish that there had been a bit more action for a book with dragons, and the way that all the adults were just so miserably horrible made it hard for me to engage with at first.

If you are a fan of historical fiction, you definitely should check this out!

I liked it, but I didn't love it. I did really like Marla, and I would love to see a novel from her POV.
Thank you very much to Doubleday and NetGalley for the ARC!

This book for me had a lot of promise; I liked the imaginative writing, however I couldn’t get past how it felt so YA when I was expecting an adult fantasy novel. Also, I just didn’t love the selections of dragons in the story, which is hugely just a personal preference for myself. They were just far too cutesy or common place for me. That, and the execution of the story just unfortunately did not work for me.

Fantastic feminist fantasy set in the 1950s. Barnhill is a great author and I really enjoyed this book, along with almost anything she has written.

I loved how the book switched between scientific information and the narrative. I loved the story and imagining women getting fed up enough of society to resist in their own badass kind of way.

babe wake up new favorite read of the year just dropped

(it’s the queer dragon rage book that has me sobbing missing my mom after midnight on a wednesday)

I am a member of the American Library Association Reading List Award Committee. This title was suggested for the 2023 list. It was not nominated for the award. The complete list of winners and shortlisted titles is at <a href="https://rusaupdate.org/2023/01/2023-reading-list-announced-years-best-in-genre-fiction-for-adult-readers/">

It’s always a joy when you go into a book with minimal expectations and the book knocks your socks off. That was my experience with When Women Were Dragons. I loved the idea of women spontaneously dragoning, but worried the story might come across as cliche. I was worried for no reason. This book was a joy.

I think this book absolutely benefited from the time that it was published too. In the wake of the me too movement, a USA that is in some ways seeming to regress to 1950, and a blatant attack on female reproductive rights, this book packages up all that feminine rage and streamlines it into a story that felt like one huge emotional release. While reality likely won’t end in the neat and tidy way the book does, it is beautiful to imagine women exploding into dragons and changing the world.

Kelly Barnhill is an expert at making magic fit seamlessly into a story and into a flawed society. In When Women Were Dragons, we follow Alex from the time she is a young girl and her mother mysteriously reappears in her life after an absence due to illness. It is the 1950s in America, and life for the women in the story is absolutely stifling at times. The story is interspersed with excerpts from news and science notes about "the mass dragoning"-- an event where thousands of women suddenly and inexplicably turned to dragons, leaving families and devouring awful men in their wake. Dragons are a taboo word for Alex and her family, as her beloved aunt dragoned and left her young baby.

This story is one that women in this country already know: that there is an anger inside of us that burns with the fire of our ancestors and has yet to be distinguished by an equal treatment in our society. This story is beautifully written and will make you furious and feel understood.

Highly recommend, especially for fans of Silvia Moreno-Garcia's The Beautiful Ones and those who like magical realism.

It's really a tremendous book, and one that I'll think about for awhile. I can see where the criticism is, this is a very white book and I wonder what it would have looked like if the characters were of color. It does operate as a memoir too, so it's hard to say how the plot is. Still, I thought the writing and the overall idea were lovely.

This book was absolutely stunning. The historical aspect plus the fierce characters all tied up with a little humor here and there made this book a top contender for me. Loved it.

I grabbed this arc because I'm a huge fan of Kelly Barnhill, and well, women turning into dragons!

I really enjoyed the book, but in all honesty, my favorite bits were the historical reflections on the dragons themselves. The book is set up as a fictional memoir of Alex, a young girl in the 50's who lived through the "Mass Dragoning of 1955". I loved the premise, the idea of feminism and female rage that literally transforms women into dragons. Perhaps because the story is told from a child's viewpoint (and a child that lives with adults gaslighting her), what I really wanted was MORE DRAGONS. I wanted to experience the dragons' viewpoint.

Still, it was an interesting, creative read, and i did enjoy it, although it wasn't what I initially thought it would be.

I adored this one! It was somehow both silly (dragons carrying purses) and stunningly fierce at the same time (the power of female fury). The way the author incorporated the (fictional) academic writing with her normal prose really resonated with me - and is such a fun way to do some quality world building! I’d recommend this to any reader who loves dragons but also needs a sweet reminder of feminine strength and power during these uncertain times.

If you know me at all, then you'll know that I am currently on a quest to find good books with both dragons and queer characters, so naturally I was very excited for this one. And it definitely delivered on the sapphics + dragons front, but I'm not totally sure it delivered as a book.

When Women Were Dragons is mostly the fictional memoir of a girl named Alex who grows us just after the Mass Dragoning of the 1950s, when thousands of women spontaneously turn into dragons, many of them burning down their homes and/or eating their husbands.

Dragoning is a vehicle for female rage and for these characters to find freedom, and I thought that the actual dragon parts of the book were fascinating and compelling. Alex's story is interspersed with various news articles and studies about the dragons, and I found all of them more compelling than her actual fake memoir stuff.

It wasn't that I disliked Alex as a character. I thought that her whole arc was a fascinating study in internalized misogyny and parental abuse and gaslighting. I loved her relationship with her sister. I liked that she was a sapphic woman in STEM. If this book had been straightforward historical fiction, I probably would have liked Alex's stuff more, but I cannot express how frustrating it was to read a book about dragons where the main character doesn't believe in dragons until about 3/4 of the way through. Alex was also very Not Like Other Girls, but that was definitely the point.

I very much think the author accomplished what she set out to with this book. I just also think that it could have done a lot more.

Misc things I liked:
Sapphic polyamorous dragons!
All of the later stuff with the dragons was generally really interesting
Fuck the dad oh my god (compliments to the author)

Misc things I did not like:
Dragoning is a metaphor for menstruation for a LOT of this book. That's fine, but it made the later attempts at including trans women feel kind of hollow
Are all of the dragons white? People of color are mentioned in this book, but all the dragons we meet are former white women

Anyway, just don't expect this sapphic dragon book to actually be about the dragons and instead expect it to be about a teen girl who loves math and has massive amounts of internalized misogyny.

Content warnings: misogyny, death of parent, abandonment, cancer, grief, homophobia

I wasn't sure what to expect from this book, but I'm a fan of Barnhill's children's fiction, so I was intrigued by what she would write for adults. She weaves a feminist tale of magical realism that beautifully captures the simultaneous rage and power of being a woman in the U.S. (and probably the world). But it's not just some fantasy feminism. It touches on so many other themes with a touching authenticity: the pain and love of family imperfect family relationships, the difficult choices we face as we grow up and get disappointed by those we count on (or we should be able to count on), the sacrifices people make for love, the loneliness of women-of-a-certain-age, the beauty of all kinds of love, and too much else for me to recall, TBH. This story is about vengeance, but it's not about revenge. It's about sorrow and sacrifice, but it's also a lovely coming-of-age story that's about the strength of family, real and found and created. It's about finding your people, about accepting ourselves, about accepting who others really are... and yet none of this feels forced or ham-handed or, frankly, unrealistic. I also particularly appreciated the conceit it uses to frame the story despite being a coming-of-age first person piece: the historical narrative as it really was rather than how "they" wanted you to know it, which fits with the idea that this is a herstory rather than the accepted "history." Highly recommended.

Thank you NetGalley and Doubleday Books for this eARC!

This was a beautiful coming of age story mixed in with a bit of magical realism. It follows Alex Green as she deals with trauma from her abusive dad and pressures of a world that wants to dictate what she must do with her life.

Even though there is a little of the fantasy element, dragoning is more of a great metaphor. I loved this book and thought the writing was beautiful.