When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill

Description from Goodreads:

Learn about the Mass Dragoning of 1955 in which 300,000 women spontaneously transform into dragons...and change the world.

Alex Green is a young girl in a world much like ours. But this version of 1950's America is characterized by a significant event: The Mass Dragoning of 1955, when hundreds of thousands of ordinary wives and mothers sprouted wings, scales and talons, left a trail of fiery destruction in their path, and took to the skies. Seemingly for good. Was it their choice? What will become of those left behind? Why did Alex's beloved Aunt Marla transform but her mother did not? Alex doesn't know. It's taboo to speak of, even more so than her crush on Sonja, her schoolmate.

Forced into silence, Alex nevertheless must face the consequences of dragons: a mother more protective than ever; a father growing increasingly distant; the upsetting insistence that her aunt never even existed; and a new "sister" obsessed with dragons far beyond propriety. Through loss, rage, and self-discovery, this story follows Alex's journey as she deals with the events leading up to and beyond the Mass Dragoning, and her connection with the phenomenon itself.

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My Review:

This book was not what I expected it to be. The author took a more creative approach and wrote the book in a memoir style despite it being fiction which while interesting, made the book very slow for me.

Alex is a very intelligent person but is so focused on trying to keep some semblance of control in her life that she shuts out anything different and stamps down any curiosity she has. You see this change in her from when she was a toddler all the way to her college years. After facing the issues with her parents and the issues with dragons. While seeing her childhood helped show the changes in her and her struggles the story dragged on for the first half of the book. I almost dropped it altogether honestly. It wasn't until she had to handle Beatrice on her own and some other characters made an appearance did things get interesting.

I did find it very funny that dragons were a taboo subject because it was a female issue. Not because they were dangerous or anything but it was inappropriate because it dealt with the female body.

Overall, I think this book just wasn't for me. While the whole concept was interesting, I struggled to get through it. If the thought of this being written in a memoir style is interesting to you, go for it because the author does a really good job. This is by no means a bad book. It just didn't quite hit its mark for me.