Publisher: Random House Books Page Count: 499 Fiction Genre: Fantasy, Dragon, Romance, Mystery, Adventure, YA Dates Read: June 5 - 8, 2015 Summary Seraphina lives in time of a peace treaty between humans and dragons. Dragons are required to morph themselves into human forms, and are forbidden to change to their natural forms, except for once a year, during the celebration of the peace treaty signing. Though this is a time of peace, humans still hold a lot of mistrust towards the dragons. Since she was a little girl, Seraphina has been told to never bring too much attention to herself, because it could mean giving up her life and the lives of those she cares about most. But how can a young woman with the gifted musical talents Seraphina has, stay unnoticed? Not only does she become the center of attention, but she soon befriends the future queen and her fiance (also the future queen's cousin). Will Seraphina be able to maintain her dearly held secret while helping and protecting her Draconian tutor? Review This is another book that I am unsure of. Overall, this was a very good book. Hartman is a good author with a good story to share. Seraphina is well written and fairly original. Though I found the love story between Seraphina and her love interest to be shallow, at best, I found the relationship between our young protagonist and her tutor to be the most lovely in this story. What confuses me, if the progress of this story. I was hooked on this book from the very start. It was beautiful and engaging. I was rooting for Seraphina all the way, hoping that things would work out for her. Then I got to about 15 pages from the end, and I lost my mind. What the hell happened? It's like Hartman didn't know what to do, and so she forced an ending and a relationship that was poorly and sadly developed, and attempted to turn it into a cliff hanger for her second book. While 95% of this story is outstanding, it is that last 5% that totally drug it through a pile of elephant dung, and then was forced into the beautiful packaging of a "romance". Twlight had a better love story than Seraphina ... I do not regret saying that. I am unsure if I can force myself to read book 2. I have hopes that Hartman can turn this around, but I am also afraid that she is in a downward spiral of placating to the YA enthusiasts to crank out a boring, poorly developed, and shallow story, just to make a few dollars. Rankings (based on a 10 point scale) Quality of Writing - 8 Pace - 7 Plot Development - 7 Characters - 9 Enjoyability - 8 Insightfulness - 5 Ease of Reading - 8 Photos/Illustrations - N/A Overall Score - 4 out of 5 stars
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