Friday Memes: When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill

 Happy Friday!

Book Beginnings is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader. She asks that the first sentence is posted along with the author and title of the book and the reader's initial thoughts on the sentence, the book, or anything else it inspires. 

Carrie at Reading Is My Superpower.org also provides a linky for sharing first lines and connecting with others. This meme asks that the chosen books be PG or marked as Mature if they are not. 

The Friday 56 was hosted by Freda at Freda's Voice. This meme is currently on hiatus but many of us are still including a sentence from page 56 or from 56% of the ebook. Anne @ Head Full of Books is picking up the slack until Freda is ready to return. I think this link will get you to the correct place. 

Beginning:

Greetings, Mother --

I do not have much time. This change (this wonderous, wondrous change) is at this very moment upon me. I could not stop it if I tried. And I have no interest in trying.

Friday 56:

In those first chaotic weeks after the Mass Dragoning, Sister Margareta, my third-grade teacher, taught us the earliest accepted explanation: that dragons, either escaped from Hell or intentionally released its Demon Gate by sinister forces in the hidden global war between good and evil (Russian, presumably), had devoured a certain subset of the nation's mothers, for reasons unknown. And likely reasons unknowable. After all, who can reason with a dragon?

Thie week I am spotlighting When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill. I have read some of her young adult books and enjoyed them. Here is the description from Amazon:

In the first adult novel by the New York Times bestselling author of The Ogress and The Orphans, Alex Green is a young girl in a world much like ours, except for its most seminal 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. 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.

Forced into silence, Alex nevertheless must face the consequences of this astonishing event: a mother more protective than ever; an absentee father; the upsetting insistence that her aunt never even existed; and watching her beloved cousin Bea become dangerously obsessed with the forbidden.

In this timely and timeless speculative novel, award-winning author Kelly Barnhill boldly explores rage, memory, and the tyranny of forced limitations. When Women Were Dragons exposes a world that wants to keep women small—their lives and their prospects—and examines what happens when they rise en masse and take up the space they deserve.