I missed my download window on this one, so had to borrow it from my library. And since there is only one copy in the state (for good reason) had a bit of a wait.

I didn't feel like there was much of a *story* here. There was a lot of stuff happening to and around the main character, Elena, but she just sits there and cries, she doesn't interact with the action at all. There's a lot of passiveness as she lets the story happen to her without question, she just accepts (and cries a lot). So the conclusion is completley unbelievable- Elena decides to take drastic and random action on a dangerous mission.

There also wasn't a lot of world building or descriptions going on in this novel. It made the book a bit difficult for me, with the weird parallel dragon-world and all.

That being said, I think the idea here is awesome, it was just poorly executed and poorly edited. I feel like this would appeal to middle school students and younger teens.

I just didn't feel this one the way others did. I immediately didn't like the writing style. I found it a bit jarring and hard to read. I didn't like Elena. She's flat. She's irritating and immature. The romance was borderline, if not flat out, insta-love. I liked the premise. I did not like the execution. I honestly DNF this one before I hit 25%.

Sorry!

Hey Guys!!

So I have been trying to work my way through these Netgalley reads. Trust me there are a few.What I like about Netgalley is that you will find some hidden gems like this series.

Ill give the a quick synopsis.

Synopsis: Dragons. Right. Teenage girls don’t believe in fairy tales, and sixteen-year old Elena Watkins was no different.
Until the night a fairy tale killed her father.
Now Elena’s in a new world, and a new school. The cutest guy around may be an evil dragon, a Prince wants Elena’s heart, and a long dead sorcerer may be waking up to kill her. Oh. And the only way Elena’s going to graduate is on the back of a dragon of her own.
Teenage girls don’t believe in fairy tales. Now it’s time for Elena to believe – in herself.

It sounds great. I love the synopsis as it is so catchy and just wants to pull you in and make you fly on your own dragon. It was however a bit sketchy at the start. I found it hard to follow at first but after a wile it picked right up.

The first 7-8 chapters almost felt like there were to many ideas to get down on the paper. Once there were out that things started to smooth over. Almost like a bumpy start.

The character introduction was lovely and smooth. It wasn't to much description and it wasn't to little. Some people put all the information there at once as if were never going to meet that character again. This was the opposite. Adrienne Woods left out enough that she can make the characters grow as the story progresses.

She has started to make a new world that, for humans in her story, would be hard to comprehend. They would go insane if they new what was beyond The Wall. Adrienne has done a great job of showing us how they would loose their minds and Elena was starting to loose hers at the start.

There are a couple of things that do bother me, like the unconditional love when Elena is so young and this would be her first boyfriend, that and it happens so quickly. But this is also a good point, she has smarts and won't do anything she does not want to do. It is nice to see Elena having friends when you know that the only person that has really had her back before was her father.

There's not much that needed improving just the odd bit here and there. The pace is great, you get a good sense of time moving and the school year passing by. The character development is also that's very well done. The only thing that really needed a bit of smoothing out were the first 7-8 chapters but even then, in the grand scale of the book it wasn't much of an issue.

On a good note, I have already started the second!! Now the first it not available to buy in print for off most places but the last few have been. I've added a link below that will take you straight to the pages for the series.

As a conclusion I have given it 4 stars! I can already see the improvements in the next book and cannot wait. Thank you very much Adrienne Woods.

3.5 Stars

This was more along the lines of a stereotypical cheesy YA Fantasy. The characters all have good and bad moments but are overwhelmingly pretty predictable. The plot was done well and has promise but suffers from only telling part of a story, not uncommon for books in a series. I don't think the world was very well established but it kept me interested.

This wasn't necessarily an amazing book but it was everything I wanted it to be and put me back in a good reading mood. So for me it's a win.

I was unable to finish the book, but thank you for the opportunity.

Sixteen year old Elena Watkins doesn't believe in fairy tales or dragons. Until her father is killed by a fairy tale. Now she's in a new world and in a new school. The cutest guy may be an evil dragon. A prince may want her heart. And a sleeping sorcerer may be waking up from slumber to kill her. And if that all wasn't bad enough, the only way Elena can graduate is on the back of her own dragon.

This was an extremely good fantasy book. It's got a blend of paranormal, fantasy, medieval times, and magic.

Elena is extremely relatable. The story building was amazing. The characters are absolutely awesome. Definitely pick up a copy!

Here, there be dragons.....

So the dragons are real, and they're all hidden behind a magic wall in the Bermuda triangle. Totally acceptable! There's different kinds and truth be told I can't remember all of them cause I literally breezed through the book & that piece of information didn't stick.

Now behind that magic wall is a mystical land called Paegeia, and there are humans that live there as well. The dragons are shape shifters and they walk around in human form most of the time. Important thing to remember is that there wasn't always a wall separating Paegeia from the rest of the world. That's how fire dragons obtained maidens and such. From the outside world. There are also humans born with a special mark. That mark, marks them as Dragonians and that means they can basically tame a dragon and ride it. Totally sweet and awesome if you ask me.

There's also your resident deceased king who united humans and dragons, tamed a bad a** mean dragon to do it too. And what's a deceased king without a evil sorcerer who wants to conquer Paegeia and tear down the wall. In this one he happens to be stuck in a castle behind a bean stock of sorts and he cant brake through until some sword (1st wielded by another ancient king) is destroyed, cause it's the only thing powerful enough to stop the sorcerer. There's also a resident oracle, who sucks prophecies out of her thumb and is full of s*it and is only worth listening to if her eyes are glowing and her hair is blowing all over the place. There's also a human who has a Dragonian mark, but her dad is a dragon (that NEVER happened before) who dies protecting her & she, of course, never met her mom. Throw in lost bloodlines, young love, unsanctioned quests that lead to tests/victory/torment/peril/death!? & you have an instant classic. Or at least a book filled with everything you love about fantasy.

This book takes every single element that you love about fantasy and sticks it in. What's actually surprising is that most of it sticks. The story is coherent, the characters for the most part extremely well developed. I have a few gripes but it's nothing mayor. All in all an excellent story and one worth reading. Its fast paced and it's a breeze to read.

Thank you, NetGalley, for offering this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Okay, that was… Bad. Like My Immortal but with dragons bad.

I originally chose this ARC of Firebolt by Adrienne Woods to read for a few reasons. 1) I was a new reviewer, trying to bolster my review rate, and it was available to read. 2) The synopsis sounded pretty cool! A girl learns dragons exist after a group of them kill her father, who has secretly also been a dragon all this time, and now she has to cope with this new reality—and this new world—she’s been thrown into. Yeah, sounds neat. 3) The rating for it on Goodreads was solid, and that site’s usually harsher than others, so I figured it was a safe bet that this would be an enjoyable read.

But I was wrong. So very wrong.

It didn’t start off bad. Sure, the writing was a tad on the basic side, more suited to much younger readers, but the opening scenes with Elena and her father were fairly strong. A sense of urgency gripped the scene, with her dad warning Elena that they have to leave immediately, and she’s never understood why her mother abandoned them both and why they’ve lived on the run, never staying in one place for too long. The dragon attack built up the action, and Elena’s disbelief was written believably and organically.

But then she’s taken to Paegeia, a land hidden on Earth by a magical barrier that separates dragonkind and the humans that know about them from the outside world, and everything goes downhill from there.

First, the land, including its school Dragonia, is floating in the air because of magic (right, of course), and Elena remarks time and again how she keeps looking in the sky for dragons, but she never sees any. Do you want to know why she never sees any? Because every dragon is a shapeshifter, and they can look 100% human, and they decide to pretty much stay like that almost 100% of the time. They never just…fly around because, well, no logical reason is ever given, honestly. (In fact, logic and sense are missing from the majority of this book.)

What a completely boring choice not to mention completely unrealistic. What self-respecting dragon, a true force of nature, would want to look human all the time, especially all the teenage dragons? That’s not…a good time to be human. Teenage years are not and should not be your prime years.

Oh, and it gets better. What are these dragons’ names, you ask? Well, we meet one named Samantha, who is one of Elena’s roommates, and it was at that moment I knew this book was a joke. That was before I met other dragons named George and Brian (Brian???), who refers to himself in third person. For some reason.

But the one that I could not believe, that I could not abide, was the name of the dragon who is apparently going to grow up to be the evilest dragon ever if he doesn’t find his dent, or perfect dragon rider. And his name…is Blake Leaf.

Are you kidding me? Blake is what you name your prophesied evil dragon, and you’re completely serious about it?? I won’t even get into the Leaf thing because Blake???

I didn’t even care by this point that there was a human prince named Lucien (finally, a proper fantasy name) because his last name turned out to be McKenzie, and I cannot. I just cannot do this at all. This is ridiculous.

As for our protagonist, Elena, she becomes completely intolerable to read very quickly. For one thing, she starts acting like an immediate brat, not wanting to learn anything. Not Latin which is required to do magic, not dragon biology which could help her understand them, and definitely not any history of this brand new world because she decides they're “dumb,” “too hard,” and that “the past should remain in the past.” As someone who values knowledge and learning new things, particularly if it meant learning about something completely foreign to me, I wanted to dropkick Elena off the floating, magical continent and put us all out of our misery.

I also couldn’t go a few pages without reading about the “one lone tear falling down her cheek before she wipes it away.” God, I got intimately familiar with that phrase, and it bred so much contempt within me. Elena cries about everything. She cries because dragons are real. She cries because something scared her. She cries because she fell down. She cries because Lucien doesn’t like her. She cries because he does. She cries because Lucien’s a prince, and they shouldn’t be together. She cries because she doesn’t know how she can live without him. She cries because a mean girl said something super mean to her. She cries because she’s going to fail her dragon classes. She cries because she thinks she’s losing her mind. On and on, she cries and cries. I wanted to reach into the book and give her something to actually cry about.

And oh, the falling down thing... She’s clumsy, to the point where she can’t seem to stay on her feet without someone’s help. Because, hey, if I didn’t hate her enough, let’s just tack on this awful character trait to give to a whiny, blubbering girl.

After Elena and Lucien start dating, which happens early on and out of nowhere, I spent the remainder of my time nauseated. Seriously, how can a book that involves dragons wind up focusing the majority of the text on a flaccid romance between two irritating and tedious humans? If for some reason you still want to venture forth and read this, prepare for endless times where he kisses her shoulder to comfort her, where he puts his arm around her, where they “kiss passionately” (that’s it; that’s all the description you get).

Every character and relationship in this book was like watching cardboard interact, and not the fun, stand-up kind of a favorite character you can buy and put in your house. Everything was either repetitive, super emotional and dramatic for no reason, or just plain absurd. I did not believe anything about this world or the over-hyped stakes in it. I didn't believe the prophesies or the supposedly evil villains that were waiting to swoop in. I especially didn't believe in the Harry Potter-like attempt at magic classes because there wasn't any magic in the text to be found, and that's a sad thing to say about a book that has dragons in it.

I truly do not care to read any more of this series, and I regret reading what I already have. I can’t think of a single person on which I would willingly subject this entire book.

*This book was provided via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review*

The first thing that attracted me to this book was gorgeous cover and the promise of dragons. The story starts with the main character, Elena, going on the run again with her father when they are attacked by… dragons! Things happen, and she ends in a strange place called Paegeia where more things should happen…. However, they don’t.

Then there was the writing...
I haven’t seen so many errors in a published novel in a very long time and the writing itself was tedious and felt flat. The descriptions didn’t work for me either, they were simply… lifeless. The was a lot of information dumping; pages and pages were the author just throws a lot of information to the reader without attempting to address them to a context and it was difficult to read. Each character that Elena was used to dump information. No, just no. Thank you.

The Characters

I did not get a grasp of the characters, who they are and where do they come from. There was not character development whatsoever. The romance between Elena and the love interest was extremely sudden and I could not for the life of me understand what she loved about him besides his hot kisses. The only time spent together was at the cafeteria and making out. That’s it. And shrieking or crying.
Oh, and everyone was gorgeous! There was this occasion when her boyfriend introducer her to another male and she instinctively through he was gorgeous and hot. Every male she encountered was hot and wanting her except for tall, dark and handsome Blake… sigh. Do we have to make ALL characters gorgeous to the point of perfect?

Then there was the plot...

From start until 50% when I DNF-ed this book, nothing ever happened plot-wise, just a lot of teen drama and information dumping. Not one real fight, not one attempt from Elena to find out what happened with her father and why! Yes, she cried on a few occasions before going to bed and was tearful when she remembered his jokes, but that was it. She was vehement about staying at the academy and study, although she so often complained about the studying, and was more interested to make-out with the gorgeous boyfriend. I was so frustrated with this that I had to stop as there were hours left to read in the story and couldn’t… Just couldn’t. I must also mention that the story felt extremely predictable and I can bet my money that I guessed the end.

This book could’ve been good if it would’ve had a plot and more life-like characters that I could root for. I am extremely disappointed to say that I did not like what I have read, although I did like the beginning scene which hooked me right in. That’s the one thing that I liked and kept me reading, waiting for something that sadly never came.

This book started out so well, and I was really drawn in by the synopsis I was given by Netgalley. The first few chapters hooked me straight in, and I was enchanted by the world and eager to learn more. Unfortunately, my expectations quickly fell apart. The info dumps were extreme and long-winded and I found myself skipping over a lot of stuff and having to read back over it again. Beyond that, the world building was pretty flat and half the time I wasn't really sure where the book was set since there was so little information to go on. The plot was also not that great, and I had to force myself to finish it. Also, I'm really big on awesome kick-ass female protagonists and I was hoping that was what I was going to get with this. Instead, to my horror, I found that Elena was pretty cardboard, and there was lots of stereotypical female drama with lots of crying and glaring and mean comments about appearances and it was just eurgh. She doesn't really do much except whine and go chasing after guys, which is definitely not the kind of heroine I was hoping to find when I picked this up. She has no actual agency at all, and with so many YA books trying to move on from that Bella in Twilight kind of protagonist, I just couldn't help but cringe over this. The relationship seemed very forced, probably because I didn't care about the characters. It just came off as insta-love which is another must-avoid trope for me. Also, don't even get me started on the adverbs. Whenever I beta for people, I always flag up adverbs. They're my pet hate. I find them redundant more than half of the time, and there were SO. MANY. in this book. Seriously, I somehow managed to finish this, but I will not be picking up any more of these books.

The start of this book is pretty dramatic with Elena’s father dying and with her finding out that dragons are in fact real. She is then taken to Paegeia as place hidden from the world with dragons and magic. They sort of throw her in the deep end to see if she can handle her new reality, which lands her a spot at her new school Dragonia. The pacing of this book was good for the most part, though there were a few moments where things seemed a bit rushed or out of place. I liked most of the characters. I will say that Elena is prone to crying but I wasn’t to put off by it because what happened with her father. Her new friends are loyal but I was not a real fan of her boyfriend. I will end by saying I love this series and I have already read the next book.

I opted for this book because of the blurb and I have a serious thang for dragons, Lol. This was on Netgalley as a Read Now and I thought why not. The beginning started out very good, then it became predictable to me. I did like many aspects of the book and it is all around a pretty good read. I don't read that many YA books but in the end it wasn't all that bad. 3.5 stars

Ok. So.
I tried.

I enjoyed the concept for this story. I loved the idea of a teenage girl discovering that the world holds a secret- dragons.
But, unfortunately, this writing style simply did not work for me. I found myself getting distracted from the story because I would get wrapped up in judging the writing style.

Someone that is not a super picky reader would probably enjoy it, because the story itself was actually a lot of fun. Also great for people that love pretty covers, because this book absolutely has that going for it.

Great start to a YA series. Girl power, fantasy, adventure,

"Firebolt" is an amazing fantasy YA novel! I am so thankful to Netgalley for letting me review this book. "Firebolt" takes us on a wonderful journey with Elena. With a love triangle and magic, what more could you want? I am very much looking forward to what else Adrienne Woods puts out in the future.

I am in love with this book. It reminded me of Vampire Acadamy with a Harry Potter feel only for dragon shape-shifters and dragon riders.

This book had me as soon as a dragon fight happened during the first chapter. Elena is left orphaned and finds her self on a magic island in the Bermuda Triangle. She is struggling with the recent loss of her father and thrown into a fairy tale world. Her school doesn't teach normal classes, instead, she has to learn dragon anatomy, latin, the art of war and the history of this magic island. Her two roommates become her best friend, and she falls in love with a prince.

When a magic sword is stolen, she and her friends set out on a quest that can only be described as 'suicidal' in order to retrieve it. This book never got dull or monotonous. It kept my attention and appeal throughout. I can't wait to read the next one!

This book had so much potential to be something amazing and it really just fell flat for me. It had terrible execution with such a great plot line. The dialogue was incredibly stilted, and the tropes of this book entirely ruined the story for me. When it came to dialogue, characters interacting, and the scene moving through the day as we followed Elena; the writing was driving me crazy. The author writes in short paragraphs that feel like bullet points, and these short paragraphs will literally jump into different times of the day without any warning or give the reader a vague explanation of a character feeling. I was constantly coming across sentences like “the pop quiz after was hard” or “I went straight to my room”. The characters were also super one-dimensional, and just symbolized all the "classic" characters of a teenage drama. I couldn’t connect with any of them, and they felt underdeveloped and boring. Elena is extremely irritating and immature. Her character whines and complains about everything! I just wanted her to get it together and stop being such a baby, and suddenly she just does. It literally goes from her acting like a child, to having no fear and being a pro. How did that happen?!?! Then there was the romance it was simply not believable. It happened way to fast even for a YA, and honestly I just didn't feel anything for them. I didn't care if they broke up. In fact I wanted a love triangle just to make it interesting. There was nothing there to make me root for them. Also as a dragon lover in fantasy stories, which was the whole reason for picking up this book, the concept of 'claiming' your dragon basically involves beating them into submission. Who let this be ok!?!? Maybe I am just a softie but I do feel like there was a better way to execute this part of the story. All I can really say is that I feel like this story was poorly executed and written. It makes me sad because I really liked the plot for this series and it has great potential to be SO much BETTER. This is of course just my own opinion, it seems that plenty of other readers are absolutely in love with The Dragonian Series and really enjoyed the writing. It just wasn’t for me, and with that, I will not be continuing this series.

This book felt younger than ya, maybe more middle grade. It was not a bad sorry but it was poorly written. The writing style was not for me.

Priced for free as a brilliant way to gain new readers as the series finishes, Firebolt has a ton of hype to live up to. Because of that hype, I was expecting... more. Half the time, due to the boarding school setting and young adult characters it felt like an odd Harry Potty fan fiction that focuses more on dragons.


While that was a disappointment and the story seemed to drag at points, I still didn't want to put it down. Woods has thinly veiled foreshadowing, which made a few things incredibly frustrating throughout the first installment. And even though I already know where it is all going to go, I have to know how it got there. So guess who purchased the whole flipping series? Yup. And after this review is complete, I'm planning on quite a few sleepless nights for the coming weeks.


But where the first installment lacked originality and finesse, it made up for it in the relationships and character building. Elena is the typical Jane that believes she's nothing and terrible while everyone fawns over her and she kicks some serious ass. But she grows so well that I can't fault the author for starting her out there. Lucian is a beautiful soul. Too bad I'm so wanting that ship to sink. Sammy and Becky are BFFs anyone wishes they had. You should hate Blake. You really should. Woods spends the whole book telling you to hate Blake. But I didn't. I really didn't.


In all, I'm going to read the rest. I enjoyed Firebolt but it missed the mark on great and landed in the good zone.


Thank you to NetGalley, Adrienne Woods, and Fire Quill Publishing for this free copy in exchange for an honest review.

I actually had a lot of fun reading this book! I found the plot pretty intriguing and based on not knowing anything about the author went in with a really open mind. While the book was good, I kept wishing it was more. It was almost like everything had a little piece missing.
For example, there was a lot of plot without actually having any plot at all. Like a ton of stuff happened but it was so unimportant to the overall arch of the story that by the end of the book, it felt like nothing had happened.
There was a cute romance, but there was no build between the characters, it was just suddenly there and we all went with it. (To be real, I was and am here for it because it was a pretty cute pairing)
I have never read another book centred around Dragons, especially not ones who shift and so I really really wanted to love this, but I walked away with a "meh".
Thank you to Netgally for providing me with a copy of this book for my honest review!