#it annoys me that booklr is apparently the more used tag but i vastly prefer bookblr because funnier

[ilikereadingactually]

When Women Were Dragons

When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill

WOW. just fucking WOW.

i love Kelly Barnhill. Iron-Hearted Violet is still one of my favorite books of all time; at the moment in my life when i read it, i was shocked by its gentleness, by how kind it was to me, The Reader, specifically. if books are friends (and they are), that book was a friend who took the time to look at me clearly and offer love.

this book feels like that friend and i both grew up a little, lived some more life, suffered some more losses, and found each other again. it's rare to feel so exquisitely seen in a way that's more subtle than representation or relatability, even though those things are at play here for me. it's more that the ache of longing in this story called to me, and both soothed and validated my answering ache.

this is all a flowery way of saying i fucking loved this book. i cried a ton. i couldn't put it down. the narrator Alex was so incredibly real and strong and flawed; her wild sister Beatrice captured my heart immediately; the struggles of the adults in their orbit and the wider world around them were fascinating and complicated. i very desperately want this to be a tv series. what a premise!! sometimes women turn into dragons!!!! deal with it!!!!!!!

the deets

how i read it: devoured the ebook on Libby, and i will be buying this one for myself as soon as the holidays are over.

try this if you: suffer under the patriarchy, have ever struggled to be your genuine self and either managed it or didn't, like dragons in your feminism and feminism in your dragons, or dig historical fantasy (set beginning in the 1950s, specifically). also...listen. i know this is narrowcasting, but if you ever skinny dipped with your friends in a fountain in the middle of the night at a women's college as part of the experience of learning to rebel against the norms of your baby boomer parents, i think you will vibe with this.

some bits i really liked: beautiful words and wounding words

Beatrice and I were made for each other. We were the paired wings of a dragonfly, or lightning with its necessary thunderclap, the spinning dance of binary stars.

___

Just before the front door flew open and my aunt stomped outside, my mother paused on the front stoop. She called to her sister's retreating figure, "Come back when you choose a normal life. Get a husband. Have a child. Maybe then we can be friends again." My aunt didn't turn around. I saw her chest expand, hold, and slowly contract. She tilted her face to the sky. "All right," she said at last. "I'll see what I can do."

___

Winter settled in, and the world froze. And then it thawed. And then it flooded. And then, once again, everything overran with heat and green and aching buds and swollen flowers and life in abundance. I was in too foul a mood to notice.