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Thank you, NetGalley and Yggdrasil Press, for the chance to read and review Dragon Den by Kriss Dean.
Dragons are in vogue these days, or at least, post-Fourth Wing; I'm starting to see them more and more often, which could just be because of the algorithms involved.
Dragon Den is How to Train Your Dragon meets Fast and Furious, although sometimes I wonder if How To Train Your Dragon is just thrown into these things to help trick the algorithm into marketing the book for you. What it does have in common with HTTYD is that the characters are young, learning about dragons, and the main character is a dumb dude, trying to make his dad proud, and in love with a high-achieving woman.
But that last similarity might also be the book's downfall.
Fourth Wing worked because it was told from a female POV. The book itself wasn't well written; it was a fast read that you had to avoid reading too closely (the same way one watches a trashy TV show), and it had good smut told from the female POV. Regarding writing quality, Dragon Den may be in the same place, but by making the main character a dude who tells the smut from his perspective, you make it weird for female readers who are, let's face it, the primary audience for this book. You really have to force yourself to read the first few chapters; as a NetGalley reviewer, I might do that, but most people will give it up. He's also such a dumb dude. So dumb.
That being said, the plot itself is interesting, especially how it progresses at the end. There are plot holes, like how the adults are that dumb and how quickly the dude gets his dragon, but I'm willing to overlook that, given that this does seem to be the author's first book.