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bananathemuffin 's review for:
The Baby Dragon Café
by A.T. Qureshi
lighthearted
relaxing
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book looked so cute when I picked it up and turned out to be a major disappointment. A cute idea in theory, but it failed in execution. The entire time it felt like I was reading a first draft. Both the prose and dialogue were stunted, there was no sense of time because events and actions the characters took were listed as happening, not described, and the plot was all over the place. It was like we wrote down everything we wanted to happen, polished up grammar and then slapped a FINISHED sticker on the script. This book has everything and yet gives us NOTHING.
I was not aware that this book is apparently a "fake dating" trope until the 200 page mark where it just springs up. This book is only a little over 300 pages, what do you mean they don't even think about dating until we're 2/3rds of the way through the book? Fake dating, at that. And then that only lasts about 50~ pages, when they realize they're in love with each other and then they're an official couple.
On another note of false premises, I was promised Grumpy Meets Sunshine. Aiden is not grumpy. He is simply shy. Throughout the entire book, Aiden is nothing but nice, even if he is a little standoffish. But he just doesn't know how to talk to people. Upon meeting Saphira, he opens up almost immediately. I mean, he's a complete stranger, why would he trust this random café owner he's never met before to care for his dragon if he was actually the Grumpy archetype? Saphira is undoubtedly Sunshine, but Aiden? Grumpy? Please, give me a break.
It is mentioned multiple times in the beginning of the book that poaching baby dragons is a huge problem. Baby dragons or dragon eggs are often stolen and sold on the black market so that normies from non-Drakkon families can participate in these illegal dragon races. This is pounded into the narrative so many times, Aiden mentions it, Saphira mentions it, her own mother freaking died from it, and then...nothing comes of it. The climax of this plot line is that Aiden and Saphira are talking and lose track of Sparky for about 30 seconds before they find him 10 ft. away sniffing a flower. Aiden scolds him for running off and Saphira scolds Aiden for scolding Sparky. Even tho she is training this dragon, and keeps telling Aiden that he needs to help train him, too, Saphira doesn't like the way that Aiden is doing it because clearly everything we heard before about dragon poaching wasn't Actually That Serious. This is the last time this is brought up, poaching is never mentioned again.
Aiden suspects that his parents interfered in making Sparky's egg hatch on purpose, forcing him to bond with and raise the baby dragon. When he confronts his parents about this at the end of the book they are offended that he would even think so lowly of them, of course they didn't.
I was not aware that this book is apparently a "fake dating" trope until the 200 page mark where it just springs up. This book is only a little over 300 pages, what do you mean they don't even think about dating until we're 2/3rds of the way through the book? Fake dating, at that. And then that only lasts about 50~ pages, when they realize they're in love with each other and then they're an official couple.
On another note of false premises, I was promised Grumpy Meets Sunshine. Aiden is not grumpy. He is simply shy. Throughout the entire book, Aiden is nothing but nice, even if he is a little standoffish. But he just doesn't know how to talk to people. Upon meeting Saphira, he opens up almost immediately. I mean, he's a complete stranger, why would he trust this random café owner he's never met before to care for his dragon if he was actually the Grumpy archetype? Saphira is undoubtedly Sunshine, but Aiden? Grumpy? Please, give me a break.
It is mentioned multiple times in the beginning of the book that poaching baby dragons is a huge problem. Baby dragons or dragon eggs are often stolen and sold on the black market so that normies from non-Drakkon families can participate in these illegal dragon races. This is pounded into the narrative so many times, Aiden mentions it, Saphira mentions it, her own mother freaking died from it, and then...nothing comes of it. The climax of this plot line is that Aiden and Saphira are talking and lose track of Sparky for about 30 seconds before they find him 10 ft. away sniffing a flower. Aiden scolds him for running off and Saphira scolds Aiden for scolding Sparky. Even tho she is training this dragon, and keeps telling Aiden that he needs to help train him, too, Saphira doesn't like the way that Aiden is doing it because clearly everything we heard before about dragon poaching wasn't Actually That Serious. This is the last time this is brought up, poaching is never mentioned again.
Aiden suspects that his parents interfered in making Sparky's egg hatch on purpose, forcing him to bond with and raise the baby dragon. When he confronts his parents about this at the end of the book they are offended that he would even think so lowly of them, of course they didn't.
"Do you really think us to be that manipulative?"
And then a sentence later,
"We may have meddled a little bit with the hatching, but it was only for your sake."
And if it's not enough that the author has forgotten what she wrote a moment ago, but it's so inconsequential. Aiden's response to his parents admitting to his accusations?
"Oh." Aiden blinked. "Well, thank you."
He doesn't even care. And this is part of a conversation that Aiden is telling his parents he doesn't want to participate in the dragon racing, and he has been gearing up to confronting them the entire book and they're just like "alright that's fine, we already knew that." And he again is just like "okay cool." Aiden has all this built up resentment for his entire family and thinks they're these awfully overbearing, controlling freaks and they're just the most reasonable people ever. And Aiden isn't even reprimanded for being a blockhead, he lets go of everything.
Information presented by the narrators is often repetitive and redundant. If we learn something from Saphira's POV, you best believe that Aiden will repeat the same talking points in his next POV chapter, and vice versa. One of my all time favorite quotes:
Information presented by the narrators is often repetitive and redundant. If we learn something from Saphira's POV, you best believe that Aiden will repeat the same talking points in his next POV chapter, and vice versa. One of my all time favorite quotes:
She laughed against his mouth, and he sat up, kissing her properly.
She slid closer to him, no longer upside down, but allowing herself to be properly kissed.
I mean, we're not even waiting until a new chapter to repeat ourselves. The entire book reads like this, too. It's bad writing all around, the plot stinks, the characters are completely one-dimensional, there's no stakes or consequences, it just sucks.
I'm giving this book a big fat 1 star rating. Again, the idea was cute but that's all I can say positively about it.
I'm giving this book a big fat 1 star rating. Again, the idea was cute but that's all I can say positively about it.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Cursing, Sexual content, Fire/Fire injury
Minor: Animal cruelty, Death, Trafficking, Death of parent, Classism