TALON

Dragons dwell among us in this contemporary romantic fantasy.

Sixteen-year-old Ember and her twin brother, Dante, are dragon shape-shifters living in a world oblivious to their existence. Raised in secrecy and isolation by the ruthless dragon organization Talon, they’ve come to Crescent Beach for a summer of relative freedom to learn how to assimilate into human society. Restless and rebellious, Ember has been anticipating this summer for years, but it proves to be anything but carefree when she meets Riley, a dangerously appealing rogue dragon, and develops very undraconic feelings for Garret, a human boy she meets on the beach. Little does Ember know that Garret is a veteran soldier from the dragon-slaying Order of St. George, and his mission is to identify and assassinate any dragons hiding in Crescent Beach. Ember and Garret’s star-crossed romance is par for the course for teen paranormal romances, as is Riley’s role as a jealous rival, but readers swooning over the kisses are unlikely to complain about the familiarity. Kagawa rotates the first-person, present-tense narration among the three leads. Though the prose is often repetitive, the insight into their respective experiences is welcome, and Ember’s and Garret’s outsider perspectives on teen social rituals are reliably amusing.

Fans of the genre will be happy to overlook this series opener’s occasional lapses of style.