When Women Were Dragons: A Novel

If you loved Lessons in Chemistry, you’ll love this.

What I liked: A historical fiction coming of age story with fantastical elements. Frustrated feminists spontaneously become dragons as commentary on the need to accept people for who they are. What I disliked: Alexa’s mother’s obsession with tying elaborate knots was never explained. Did she think it could prevent dragoning? The author never circled back to explain.

Just wow. Wow, wow, wow. I went into this book not fully grasping what I was getting into and I’m glad for it. This book felt mired in reality as though something like this *could* happen while also feeling like a fairy tale you learn as a young child but never fully understood the gravity of until you were older. Yes, there were some preposterous bits but that didn’t pull me out. In fact, this was nothing like I’ve ever read. I found myself in tears at certain aspects, mad as hell in others and rejoicing with our characters. This had quickly become a new favorite book in my eyes. Instant 5 stars.

We read this book for the Book Club I host in PDX, Oregon. I liked the idea of the story. And I could see the rage for the woman's plight back in the 50s and 60s. I also liked the historical accuracy for events taking place in those times. However I found certain things to just be wildly unbelievable and it made it hard to consider the story past those things about 3/4 of the way through the book. I tried to just ignore those bits so I could stay in the story.

Well written, although it felt like there was A LOT of filler. I think this would have worked better as a series of related short stories. I would read more by this author.