A review by suvissiin
When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill

emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

A story of empowering femininity  following a young woman’s coming of age story in a society and family being distrupted and challenged by dragoning of women. The best part of this book for me was the moving  relationship between the main character and her sister, and how much the love they had for each other was felt in the page. I also enjoyed the lyrical writing style in the book. What I had problems with where the illogicality of many aspects in the book, even though the book tried to paint it in a realistic light. The dragons are bulletproof and can travel through space, but the US government is not interested at all, not to talk about areas Europe or Oceania where women had more equality in the time period not being mentioned. Even if this all could be excused that the story is for the narrative, the ”research” parts felt very lacking and shallow. And why are the dragons anthropomorphic? All in all this book seems to try to use dragons as symbolism in the story and the society of the main character, but in the end they felt really disconnected, unfinished and overall disappointing