Book: The Girl Who Dreams in Fire by Stephanie Slagle
Reviewed by Andareadstoomuch
Rating: 2/5
Thank you to Books & Bloom PR for the advance copy of the book. All opinions are my own and freely given.
I was all set for a YA book filled with witches, magic, dragons, pirates and adventure. And that is what I got for the first 90% of this book. Then, we missed a turn to Albuquerque and I have no idea what happened.
Let me back up. This book started out really strong. The FMC is a fire witch, one of the last after the entire community of witches was executed after being blamed for bringing the Shadows despite being the reason the Shadows were defeated the first time. After a public execution of a young fire witch in the town square, our FMC is outed as a fire witch herself and must flee with her younger sister.
On the run, the sisters encounter pirates who want to turn them in for the bounty they will fetch. When it’s revealed the pirate captain wants to use the FMC’s power to find a mysterious land with dragons, they are allowed to join the crew, despite not being welcomed due to the whole fire witches are evil sentiment.
With me so far? (There’s a whole subplot here involving the grandmother being kidnapped by the Shadows that they are also trying to save, along with a love interest on the ship around the FMC’s own age, and a plot with some of the crew actively trying to kill the FMC.) From here on there are spoilers, read at your own risk.
The dragon island is found, dragons are trained to carry pirates and fire witch alike in just a few days, and then surprise the pirates double cross the fire witch and try to kill her. Turns out the pirate captain is the illegitimate daughter of the king and she wants his throne. She gets saved somehow with a red potion, and then finds a newly hatched dragon that she not only teaches to fly, she also teaches it to carry her. In a few days. Like… these dragons have been hidden for hundreds of years. I just… anyway… at this point we are in the last 10% of the book. There’s a big battle with the Shadows that turns out to be the high priest all along (wtf), then the pirates and dragons show up, and there’s a fight with the remaining shadows, they try to kill the girl AGAIN (sigh), and then she falls in a coma after using her power to wipe out the Shadows. For six months. And then she wakes up. The bad guys (the pirates) are now in power and there’s NO RESOLUTION. Nothing. In the note to readers at the end, she asks if we want a sequel. No ma’am, I would like a proper ending.
All the action was packed into the last 10% with no explanation and the final part of it is her waking up from a 6 month coma? The frustration I had with this ending is not fit for public eyes. It made almost no sense compared to the rest of the book, and could have benefited from about 50 more pages to build in the backstory and reveals. Instead it was rushed and awkward and ruined what would have been a great YA story.