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.

DNF @ page 129/340

This book had such a great premise... but it quickly devolved into a tedious bildungsroman of a (perhaps queer?) woman growing up in the repressive 1950s. Things happen but Barnhill writes everything in such a flat, monotonous voice that it's hard to differentiate among individual slights, familial upheavals, and the Mass Dragoning that ultimately struggles to push the narrative forward.

Great book and enjoyed the characters . loved the slight romance and the how well the group worked together. Overall a great book . I would read this author again.

I received a digital ARC from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed this reading experience. I loved Alex's coming-of-age and what that journey looked like for her, how emotional it was in so many different ways. And of course I loved the dragons and all they stood for.

I've seen the other reviews for this and the complaints that Barnhill has failed to consider so much by setting this story in the mid-50's, by focusing on white middle-class women rather than women of color, poor women, etc. But I wonder, if she had attempted to widen her lens beyond the small stories provided via "historical document" and occasional mentions, would there be equal criticism that those are not her stories to tell? If a writer doesn't feel like they can do justice to a wider story, should they write the story they feel comfortable writing or not write the story at all?

I'm glad Barnhill chose to write the story she felt comfortable writing, even if it's not as inclusive as others wanted it to be. I thought it was beautiful and heart-breaking and infuriating and joyful.

I feel like I missed the a large plot point. The dragons felt...unneccesary? Like maybe I was missing a metaphor or something but I just wanted more plot? More to happen? I'm not even sure how to explain my thoughts. It was good but...not mind blowing?

Although slow to start, I really enjoyed the magical world intertwined in the 1950s.

Overall, Alex’s story was very thoughtful and certainly expressed the many hardships women faced in the 1950s, however, it also felt like a lecture on women’s rights.

I thought the narrative between Alex and Beatrice was really beautiful and certainly showed the power of family through difficult times. In some ways their hardships reminded me of The Glass Castle, with a magical twist.