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A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping
Sangu Mandanna
4.3
When Women Were Dragons: A Novel
by Kelly Barnhill
Published May 3, 2022
Categories
About this book
In 1955, the world shifts irrevocably when the Mass Dragoning occurs: hundreds of thousands of ordinary women spontaneously sprout scales and wings, erupting into fire-breathing dragons before taking flight. For young Alex Green, the event is a personal earthquake that shatters her family. Her beloved Aunt Marla is among the transformed, yet society immediately enforces a suffocating silence, scrubbing the names of the dragon-women from history and insisting they never existed.
As Alex grows up in a mid-century America desperate to shove women back into the domestic box, she grapples with the fallout of the phenomenon. While her mother clings to a fragile, enforced normalcy, Alex’s cousin Bea becomes dangerously obsessed with the forbidden truth of their missing kin. Caught between a world that demands she stay small and the fiery, untamed legacy of those who literally took up the space they deserved, Alex must navigate the tensions of memory, rage, and identity.
This story blends the constraints of 1950s gender roles with a soaring, speculative premise, exploring the cost of silence and the terrifying, exhilarating power of women who finally refuse to be contained.
Available Formats
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What readers are saying
booksand_biscuitsNever Underestimate a Woman
"Never underestimate the fury (or the passion) of a woman. A woman’s love is fierce. All women are magical. Women experience a desire to be their true self without the expectation to turn into something different by patriarchal beliefs and views. Women (dragons) cannot truly fly or be in pursuit of happiness until they are ready to cut loose from the patriarchy and their burdens. Kelly Barnhill illustrates the stereotypes and injustices toward women in a beautiful, creative, and engaging way. 🐉 If a woman wants to leave home, she is a Gypsy. 🐉 If a woman no longer loves her husband, something is wrong with her. 🐉 If a woman wants equal education, she is a radical or feminist. 🐉 If a woman loves another woman, she is troubled. 🐉 If a woman is not subservient to her husband and children, she is not God fearing. 🐉 If a woman feels like her current life is not enough, she struggles with mental health. 🐉 If a woman wants to conduct research and enter a STEM related field, she is masculine. 🐉 If a woman wants to be a political leader or CEO, she is taking an opportunity away from a man. 🐉 If a woman stands up for herself, she is opinionated. 🐉 If a woman teaches her daughter to be strong and independent, she is a witch. Favorite quotes: “Perhaps this is my destiny, to be the one sensible thing in an often senseless world.” “Nearby a dog barks. Nearby an engine hums. I close my eyes and listen to the drone of cicadas calling to one another from tree to tree to tree. Memory is a strange thing. It reorganizes and connects. It provides context and clarity. It reveals patterns and divergences. It finds the holes in the universe and stitches them closed, tying the threads together in a tight unbreakable knot. I learned this from my mother and now I will teach it to you.” I highly recommend this compelling read that encourages you to think outside of the box via a fantasy narrative. ["
May 24, 2024 Verified Purchase
JANICE PRINCEThe title of the book says it all
"I wasn't sure what this book might be about, but as I read it, I became immersed in the story and could not put the book down. At times it was a bit funny, others serious, and others where I found myself getting kind of weepy over where the story was heading. The book is about women turning into dragons at some point in their lives and leaving their homes and families to explore the stars and cosmos and often returning to their homes at some point to find their families have moved on, and others welcome them back with open arms, even though they are still dragons. Even though they become dragons, they can become human again and yet turn back to dragons again. Their returning finds many of them rejected by their families, they find a way to fit in with the human population, with all it entails (government interference and such). By the time I was nearing the end of the story, I felt myself getting kind of weepy, a lump in my throat and a kind of heaviness in my chest (emotional) - because of all the things the female dragons went through and what those left behind went through. Read it an decide for yourself what a great book this is. ["
October 13, 2025 Verified Purchase
Mother of 3Liked not loved
"This book was more like a 3.5 for me. I loved the premise of the story, but I felt there were times that it bogged down. I also was trying to draw conclusions about the metaphors - Dragoning seemed to represent women’s fierce fight for women’s rights but then it was not clear if it was representing many other things as well. Maybe the confusion was the point of the story….. ["
June 9, 2025 Verified Purchase
Angela Alvarez VelezThis could have gone so very, very wrong. But it didn't-
"Ooof, this was a hard book to write. Not to read. It was a delight to read, let me be very clear. But it was a tough sell and I was very wary at first. I know and love the author, having read many of her previous MG books, so I was willing to give this a try and I am so glad I did. What I mean by it being hard is that the whole women-becoming-dragons thing could have easily been ridiculous, cartoonish, silly, or else preachy or heavy-handed or just over the top and angry. It was none of those things. It seemed entirely plausible and urgent and likely in a way that felt not just believable but inevitable. The characters of Marla, Beatriz, Alex, Sonjia, the librarian, the father...they are wonderfully layered and complex and achingly familiar to me. To all women, I would say. Dragons, I found, could be a metaphor for any number of things, all of them happening right here, right now (wherever here is, whenever now is). There is no easy way to describe this book, no caption that will capture the craft and genius of this writer to tangle this knot and make it both aesthetically pleasing and politically accurate while also poignantly critical but still optimistic and satisfying and lovely. What else can I say? Read it. And then, please, talk about it. ["
June 14, 2023 Verified Purchase