“Seraphina” by Rachel Hartman

Rachel Hartman - Seraphina — Available on Amazon and at your local bookstore.

A few months ago, I was reading one of my Shelf Awareness newsletters when I discovered a new book to read, Seraphina by Rachel Hartman. I was drawn to the story since it featured dragons that can take on human form. Why did this interest me? Well, it just so happens that a few nights prior to my discovery I had a weird dream about dragons that could become humans so I was elated to find a book that’s based on part of my dream. It’s pretty cool.

Since I’ve just got a Nook Color, I decided to use Seraphina as my guinea pig/test-rat. So instead of skipping off to Barnes & Noble and harassing the booksellers into convincing me to buy a book since I suck at convincing myself sometimes, I instead searched for Seraphina in the Nook books shopping database, clicked “buy”, and download.

It was weird reading on the Nook. Mainly it’s because I’m one of those readers who always look back to the book’s cover while reading. For some reason, I always think that the cover will give me a clue as to what will happen. Other times, I look at the cover to see if it fits the story. It’s a bit difficult to do this on the Nook since it’s easy to lose the page you’re presently reading. Hence the bookmark feature comes in handy.

Other than my weird book cover hang up, it was great reading on the Nook. I’m not a big fan of reading things on a screen, but I think it will grow on me the more I use it. Of course, I will never get rid of my books. Not in a million years.

Anyways, back to the story.

Seraphina is a lovely story about a girl who is half dragon and half human and how she tries to thwart an attempt to destroy the peace treaty between dragons and humans in Goredd all while battling her issues with self-acceptance and love. Being half-and-half is taboo in Goredd and those who are try to keep that part of their identity hidden. Seraphina does so by wearing long sleeves that hide her dragon scales.

Apparently, there are more people like Seraphina throughout all the lands and weirdly, Seraphina is connected to them (I put ‘weirdly’ because neither Seraphina nor her uncle Orma can explain why). Since Seraphina is the first in the series, I am curious of how this connection will play out in the other titles.

Although I was not totally hooked on the story, I found it to be a good read. I enjoyed it while reading but when I was done, it didn’t linger. Usually when I’m finished reading a story, I like it to stick around for a while so I can replay my favorite scenes in my head. Unfortunately, this did not happen with Seraphina.

Still, I do recommend it to others. I find it to be a sophisticated YA novel. You definitely have to read it with a dictionary handy, which is another reason why reading it on the Nook was great. All I had to do was highlight a particular word, click “look up” and the definition would pop up immediately; no internet connection necessary.

Shadow Scale (book 2) —>