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““Anger is a funny thing. And it does funny things to us if we keep it inside. I encourage you to consider a question: Who benefits, my dear, when you forst yourself to not feel angry?” She tilted her head and looked at me so hard I thought she could see right into my bones. She raised her eyebrows. “Clearly not you.””

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Rating
Plot ★★★★★
Characters ★★★★☆
Emotional Impact ★★★★★
Atmosphere ★★★★★
Writing Style ★★★★☆

Favourite Character
Alex

My thoughts while reading it

It is so rare to find a book that looks like such a small, quiet story on the surface, yet completely breaks your heart. For me, When Women Were Dragons is the perfect definition of Everyday-Grandeur. It captures the suffocating reality of a suppressed life, only to show you how quickly that silence can ignite into a dragonfire. Anyone who finds a sense of rebellion in the quiet moments of life will feel right at home here. This isn’t a sanitized fantasy story. It consists of kitchen-table silence and the literal tearing apart of social cages. When the women in this book transform into dragons, it’s a deeply human, heartrending breaking point. This whole concept of dragon-shifting becomes the ultimate expression of freedom. A beautiful, terrifying breaking away that proves you cannot force a human soul into a tiny box forever without it eventually growing wings and burning the whole cage down.

It all begins in a meticulously controlled alternative version of the 1950s, a place defined by rigid societal norms and forced structures. But then, a mysterious event happens: the “Mass Swarming.” Thousands of women suddenly transform into majestic dragons, leaving their old lives behind and literally breaking their social and family shackles. In the heart of this chaos stands our young protagonist, Alex Green. She tries to navigate a world that chooses to ignore, deny, exploit, and condemn both the dragons and the women. Alex grows up in a classic family with an absent father and a strict, emotionally distant mother, eventually taking on the responsibility of raising her young cousin, Beatrice, after Beatrice’s mother, Alex’s aunt Marla, transforms into a dragon. This transformation is wrapped in a heavy blanket of silence and declared a taboo, making the trauma all the more present, confusing, and defining for Alex’s everyday life.

Even though this book is firmly seen as a feminist masterpiece, which it absolutely is, for me, the true heartbeat of the story lay in the realization of how incredibly difficult it is to achieve true personal freedom. We are bound by so many constraints from society, family, and friends. It is a sad, vicious cycle. Even when we want to do better, we often end up transferring those exact same heavy expectations onto the people we love the most. Yet, using these majestic creatures to symbolize a strong woman was nothing short of clever. It reminds us that women, and indeed anyone else who has felt boxed in, are capable of being something profoundly grand entirely for themselves. The transformations into dragons represent the built-up anger and frustration grown over generations, portraying them not as something to be feared, but as a legitimate, transforming force.

What makes this cycle so suffocating, both in the book and in reality, is the deliberate, crushing silence. No one talks about the dragons. The topic is completely pushed into the shadows, discussed only in hushed tones behind closed doors, exactly like the way society treats menstruation. It is a devastatingly accurate parallel. Even today, people still whisper about periods or react with discomfort if a man overhears that a woman is on her cycle. Barnhill captures this perfectly. When we refuse to speak openly about our bodies, our lives, our wishes, or our struggles, those very things are forced to become “uncomfortable,” “embarrassing,” or “gross.” We get sucked into this toxic whirlpool of shame where vital parts of our lives are treated as taboos simply because society refuses to acknowledge them. But honestly, what is so obscene or shameful about women reclaiming their narrative and showing up as a deeply powerful force? 😉

Love, too, is a massive, complicated pillar of this narrative. It is written to pure perfection because it shows how love can simultaneously free us and hold us captive. We see this beautifully in the bond between Alex and Bea. Their love is the very thing that holds them back, because loving someone inherently means dealing with expectations, the terror of letting go, and the desperate instinct to keep a small piece of your soul entirely for yourself. It is a heartbreakingly honest study of how hard it is to protect the ones we love without accidentally smothering them. Alex tries so hard to shield Bea, but in doing so, she becomes just as overprotective and silent as her own mother was with her, repeating the very behavior she hated so much as a child.

The absolute emotional core of this book, however, is the dreamy and beautiful relationship between Alex and Bea, the two sisters, the cousin, the child. It is such a small, quiet bond, yet it is utterly heart-wrenching. It is through this bond that we truly see Alex’s character. She spent her youth silently raging against her strict, emotionally closed-off mother, yet the story brutally shows how easily we become the very thing that suppressed us if we refuse to speak about our feelings. To be honest, at first, I found it a bit disappointing that Alex didn’t actively fight the system. Instead, she often works within it and reproduces its problematic values. But looking back, that was actually incredibly authentic. She was raised in these strict patriarchal structures, those values were deeply drilled into her by her environment and her own mother. Unlearning all of that and starting to question it is a slow, painful process, and Barnhill portrays this beautifully. Alex often criticizes herself, noticing how much she has learned over the years and how much more aware she has become. Her growth from an insecure, conforming teenager to a self-thinking young woman is what creates such a strong bond with the reader.

Amidst the large cast of characters, the stark contrast between Alex and Beatrice is brilliant. They couldn’t be more different. While Alex’s upbringing forces her to be a reserved, dutiful girl with a hidden thirst for truth, Beatrice represents the next generation. She grows up almost untouched by the old conventions. Her childlike curiosity and innocence stand in sharp contrast to the oppressive reality Alex lives in, making her a beautiful beacon of hope for a future where women can think and live independently.

I loved how the simplest moments in this book were the ones that truly defined what freedom means, but also a certain fury. It isn’t the massive political topics that shape us, but the tiny, everyday things that break our hearts. The simple right to go to school. The quiet dignity of reading whatever books we desire. At its core, the story focuses so deeply on just how incredibly hard life is for Alex. She is constantly drowning in the exhausting daily struggle of balancing her schoolwork while being forced into a demanding mother role for her cousin Bea. Deep down inside, you can feel how desperately she wants to break free from these grueling, endless days. Yet, at the same time, she is so deeply entrenched in those old, rigid structures that she can’t even allow herself to step out of them at first. It’s the way Barnhill contrasts this heavy, domestic, small-scale entrapment with the sudden, vast presence of dragons that makes the book so incredibly poignant. But what I found so beautiful is that the dragons here are never depicted as something purely epic or unreachable. They are just as ordinary and everyday as we humans are and that is exactly how it should be. After all, the dragons are just another shell for a living being.

The dragon transformation itself is never fully explained, but honestly, you don’t need an explanation for it at all. It didn’t need a scientific breakdown, it just needed to find a medium to show how absolutely ridiculous and absurd our self-created societal structures really are. It stands as an incredibly powerful symbol of female liberation and suppressed rage, screaming at us that we just need to finally start speaking up. Nevertheless, a few historic elements were beautifully woven into the story, as Barnhill styles it like a fictional historical record. For me, the way she weaves official reports, newspaper articles, letters, and scientific texts into the narrative gives the whole plot such a unique, fascinating texture.

Reading this, I found myself wishing that the oppressed, no matter who they are, could just transform into dragons. This book actually held up a mirror to me, pointing out my own flaws in those tiny, everyday moments. It made me realize that we should give everyone their freedom, and we should never take it away from anyone, no matter how much it might hurt us to let them go. In the end, this quiet, precious, almost cozy story of a young girl and her cousin manages to perfectly hold and balance these massive, earth-shattering themes of freedom, feminism, rage, and love and the heartbreaking reality of a girl who simply has to break free from the structures holding her down, reminding us that no one should ever hold us back from simply spreading our wings.

Reading Recommendation? ✓
Favourite? ✓