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A review by raspberrynotes
When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill
1.0
A dragon applying lipstick?
I was really hoping for more in this story as there were so many compelling story lines. The relationships with Alex’s parents and her sister and what it could look like for her aunt to return were all interesting premises for a dragon filled world where the public pretended these things didn’t exist.
But instead I found Alex to be so confusing. She was so committed to academia and learning but refused to learn or acknowledge the existence of dragons even after living completely independently with knowledge at her disposal. Completely misaligned with her character. She also had such a complex relationship with her mother that she never fully addressed and chalked it up to her mom getting it wrong sometimes. And she experienced extreme neglect from her father, yet she fell into line when he told her how to behave even though he wasn’t involved. This book’s focused a lot on empowerment somehow Alex never learned to feel empowered. I just kept waiting for her to wake up and finally see the whole picture of the story she’s literally telling.
And the dragons just didn’t seem believable. Why was the mass dragoning only in the US but occurred all over the world in small quantities throughout history? Why do they need purses? Or lipstick? They can knit and bake and go into buildings but are sometimes described as massive? And somehow the world just pretends dragons don’t exist, but millions of women in history have transformed??? I just couldn’t find some of this believable. And it had a lot of potential to be.
I was really hoping for more in this story as there were so many compelling story lines. The relationships with Alex’s parents and her sister and what it could look like for her aunt to return were all interesting premises for a dragon filled world where the public pretended these things didn’t exist.
But instead I found Alex to be so confusing. She was so committed to academia and learning but refused to learn or acknowledge the existence of dragons even after living completely independently with knowledge at her disposal. Completely misaligned with her character. She also had such a complex relationship with her mother that she never fully addressed and chalked it up to her mom getting it wrong sometimes. And she experienced extreme neglect from her father, yet she fell into line when he told her how to behave even though he wasn’t involved. This book’s focused a lot on empowerment somehow Alex never learned to feel empowered. I just kept waiting for her to wake up and finally see the whole picture of the story she’s literally telling.
And the dragons just didn’t seem believable. Why was the mass dragoning only in the US but occurred all over the world in small quantities throughout history? Why do they need purses? Or lipstick? They can knit and bake and go into buildings but are sometimes described as massive? And somehow the world just pretends dragons don’t exist, but millions of women in history have transformed??? I just couldn’t find some of this believable. And it had a lot of potential to be.