Dragons of Wild by Ava Richardson : Review

In a time of darkness, unlikely heroes will rise. The once-peaceful kingdom of Torvald has been ravaged by evil magic, forcing Riders to forget their dragons and their noble beasts to flee to the wilds. Now, anyone who dares to speak of dragons is deemed insane and put to death. Into this dark and twisted land, Saffron was born sixteen years ago. Blessed with the gift of dragon affinity, she has been forced into a life of exile, secretly dreaming of a normal life and the family she lost. Scholarly and reclusive, Bower is the son of a noble house on the brink of destruction. His mission is to fulfill a mysterious prophecy and save his kingdom from the rule of the evil King Enric, but all he wants is to be left alone. When he meets Saffron, Bower gains a powerful ally—but her magic is too wild to control. Their friendship might just have the power to change the course of history, but when the Dark Mage King Enric makes Saffron a tempting offer, their alliance will be shaken to the core.

I had really high hopes for Dragons of Wild when I first requested a copy of it to review. I enjoyed reading Ava Richardson’s Return of the Darkening series and expected no less for her newest book. So I was more than a little disappointed when I discovered I just didn’t like Dragons of Wild very much. The fact that I think it had a lot of potential just makes it that much worse, you can clearly see the book it could have been when reading it.

I think Ava Richardson is a great writer, I’ve enjoyed every other book she has published so far, so I’m not really sure what happened with this one. I struggled from page one to even get into the book, and when I finally started to make progress it still took me over a week to finish it. There is nothing worse than going into a book expecting a quick and fun read and getting the complete opposite.

Unfortunately, there really wasn’t anything I liked about this book. I found the characters to be two-dimensional and really struggled to empathize or connect with them in anyway. Most importantly though, I didn’t find the story to be very cohesive or to flow very well at all. Which is disappointing because I thought the plot sounded interesting when I read about it. Unfortunately, kept getting jarred out of the story and thought the pacing just wasn’t there.

That being said, I’m not giving up on Ava Richardson yet. Like I said at the beginning of my review, I think she’s a great author and I liked her previous books. I’m going to wait for the next book in this series and see if she addresses any of the problems I thought this one had. I’m hoping that all of the issues I found were because the book is first in a new series. I will still buy the sequel when it releases.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.