Title: Firelight
Series: Book #1 in the Firelight trilogy
Author: Sophie Jordan
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication Date: September 7, 2010
Genres: Young Adult – Urban Fantasy, Romance
Pages: 323
Format: Purchased Paperback

“Firelight” by Sophie Jordan is my TBR Jar Challenge book of the month (reread a favorite book), and so I reread it and enjoyed it just as much as I did the first time. This story is about a girl named Jacinda and how she and her family, among others, are descendants of dragons, called draki. They are able to shift into dragon form (mostly dragon) either on command or when they’re having a heightened sense of emotion, such as fear. But one day when Jacinda and her best friend, Az, go out for a morning flight – which is forbidden in fear of being caught – they are chased by hunters and almost struck down. Jacinda lures them away while Az hides and comes face to face with a hunter: Will. But he doesn’t harm her; in fact, he’s struck by her beauty.

But then when her pride finds her later, they are furious, as her mother. Though she is the only fire-breather to have been born in generations, they won’t hold back on their punishments. And her mother knows just what the pride will do to Jacinda for disobeying the rules. So her mother decides to uproot her and her twin sister, Tamra, out of the safety of the pride to a desert region where Jacinda will most likely lose her draki because there is no fresh air, coolness of mist, or anything really lively about the land they move to. And her mother knew it.

And then things start getting really interesting when Will attends the school they two girls now attend.

Okay, so as far as plot goes, I love this story. The fact that it’s about dragons is really cool in and of itself, and just the overall concept I find intriguing. There’s romance, there’s some action… I mean, I like it a lot.

Jacinda, herself, is a… well, she’s often a whiny character and goes back and forth on what she wants or what she should do fairly often. It can be annoying, but I also understand that she is a sixteen year old who just had her life ripped away from her and her mother is trying to kill off a very large part of her. So really, I understand her gripe. If I were put in her position, I’d probably do the same thing. She doesn’t really go through extensive character development until the next two books in the trilogy, but this was a good start to get to know her and who she is as a person and a draki.

Will is the boy who hunted her but didn’t kill her, finding her beautiful and unable to do what everyone else wants him to do. He’s a kind guy with a good heart, and though he was sick before, he has a way to survive now that makes him very valuable to his family of hunters. He is instantly drawn to Jacinda when she arrives in his town, and she is instantly drawn to him, though they don’t know why or really understand it until much later in the book. When you find out why, though, it’s shocking (even though I already knew it since I had read the trilogy before).

Tamra, Jacinda’s twin sister, is a defunct draki – she never manifested, never gained any power, so she feels isolated and all alone in the pride. When they move to the new town she’s able to make a new life for herself and make friends and do other kinds of activities that were otherwise not welcome to her back in the pride. She’s much more hot headed than Jacinda, in my opinion, but she’s strong in her own way.

There are other characters that make appearances in this book, but they make more appearances that I can talk about in the upcoming books later on. For now, just know that I’m not a big fan of any of them, really. Except Nidia and Az, they’re cool.

My biggest peeve with this book was the writing style. The sentences are short and choppy, and where there easily could have been a single stream of thought was cut short and make smaller by these small sentences. It was actually really annoying. I often found myself just stringing the sentences together in my head because I felt that was the only way that they made sense to me. Otherwise, I enjoyed the fast pace plot of the book, I really enjoyed the romance, and I just thought that the overall concept was cool.

So, let me compare my first read through to now in terms of rating:

Before: 5/5 stars hand down.

Now: 4/5 stars, mostly because of the writing and some other things (such as Jacinda’s whiny voice) that played a factor into this rating.

I still really enjoyed the book, though, and recommend it if you’re into dragons and romance.