Book Review: Dreamwalker

Book: Dreamwalker (The Red Dragon Academy book #1) by Rhys Bowen and C.M. Broyles

Source: Borrowed from Publisher/NetGalley for an honest review

Publication: Available now

Publisher: Red Dragon Press

Description:

Seven children. Seven special powers. One enemy.

Addy is a typical California surfer girl until her mother dies and she is sent to a strange boarding school in Wales, where one hallway leads not to another part of the school but to another universe. Addy has always had vivid dreams. Now it seems this power to dream has made her the enemy of the powerful ruler of Gallia.

How can Addy and her new friends be any match for the powerful Grymur who calls himself The One in a world where nothing makes sense.


Rating: 1 star (Did Not Finish)

Review:

Sometimes the prologue can enhance or hinder a story and it's the latter in this account. It's confusing and didn't really inspire me to read further but I did to see how the story would be. I think it would have been best if the prologue had been removed completely with the book opening with the first chapter.

I really had a hard time getting into this story, I just couldn't connect with it. It's boring and slow moving with the writing being sometimes choppy, unengaging and bland. The main character Addy was forgettable as well as the rest of the characters. I read over a hundred pages of this before I stopped, it didn't leave me interested in continuing.

The first chapter finds Californian 7th grader Addison "Addy" Walker with her English aunt Jean packing up all of her belongings for her move to London after the death of her mother. One moment while she was looking out the window, she saw two women dressed in hooded capes standing near a dragon. They asked her if she was going to go out and meet them, which she did with absolutely no hesitation. Hello, they're strangers and not to mention there's a dragon just standing there.

They told her they had been waiting for her that it was time for her to leave, she somehow wound up on the dragon flying off to an unknown destination but surprise, surprise that turned out to be a dream. She woke up on a plane sitting next to her aunt. The thing about Addy is she has a lot of strange dreams that always seem to feel real or as if they are trying to tell her something.

As soon as Addy arrived in London it wasn't long before her stuffy aunt was trying to find a boarding school to send her to. After several unsuccessful online searches, her aunt found The Dragon Academy (thanks to an annoying and very persistent pop up) and it seemed to offer everything that her aunt was looking for in a school, discipline and a tough curriculum.

The school which was in a castle was located in Wales and was not at all what Addy was expecting. The castle was old and creepy and had bars on the windows and at one point over the years it had once been an insane asylum.

On her first day she spent most of her time touring the school with the headmistress Ms. Neves but during dinner she met some new friends, Sam, Celeste, Raj and Pippa. As they were talking it appears that the school was promoted in different way to either fit each student's interest or the parent/guardian's interest.

During her first night there, Addy had an awful dream that seemed to take her to a very strange place where she was nearly captured by a mysterious man if she had not been woken up by one of her roommates.

By the time Addy completed her test in the dungeon which was to access her academic abilities and took a painting test, I was so bored with this book. And even as she headed to dinner with her headmistress and overheard her art teacher and the headmistress talking about her in a mysterious way that didn't spark my interest in this story.

This story was pretty mundane and I didn't feel like reading any more to finally get to the magical aspect of this book. I wish this had been a fun and whimsical story but it felt so predictable and a little disjointed. I really wanted to like this book but I didn't.