Dragons, Found Family, and One Chapter That Completely Wrecked Me: A Review of When Dealing With Dragons by Dana Swift

2 days ago
5 min read

Cover of When Dealing With Dragons by Dana Swift

Author: Dana Swift

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Rating: 4.5★

Content Warnings: Animal abuse/torture, animal death, child abuse, cancer, classism, violent fight scenes

This book made me sob in the early chapters and I was not okay about it. In the best way.

When Dealing With Dragons at a Glance

Rating: 4.5★

What it's about: A YA found family fantasy following dual POVs through a world where dragons bond with humans and metal crafting magic determines your place in society. Farren Walsh tends to dragons on her family's sanctuary. James Murphy, silver crafter and famous dragon racer, comes to stay for the summer. Farren is keeping a secret that could change everything.

Why I liked it: The world building around dragon bonding and metal crafting magic is genuinely original, the socio-political hierarchy feels real and lived-in, and every single character has a completed arc that earns its emotional payoff. The rivals-to-lovers romance between Farren and James is genuinely cute.

What held it back: The world building could go deeper. James' chapters start to feel repetitive as the pining drags on, and the dual POV voices sometimes blur together enough that I had to check whose chapter I was in.

Good for readers who enjoy: YA fantasy, dragon bonding stories, found family dynamics, rivals-to-lovers romance, and stories that take animal welfare seriously.

The Premise

I will be honest: when I first read the description for When Dealing With Dragons, I was not sure what to expect. A dragon veterinarian assistant, a famous dragon racer, metal crafting magic, and a summer of learning? That is a lot of moving parts. But Dana Swift pulled it together in a way that made me want to keep reading from the first chapter.

The story follows Farren Walsh, a copper crafter who helps her father run a dragon sanctuary, and James Murphy, a silver crafter from one of the most respected families in the country who comes to stay with the Walshes for the summer to learn how to actually care for dragons. James is also Farren's academic rival for a scholarship, which does not exactly make for a warm welcome. And underneath all of it, Farren has a secret that could either change the world for the better or burn everything down.

The dual POV setup gives you both sides of this dynamic from the start. You get Farren's wariness and James' dawning realization that his entire understanding of dragons has been wrong. It is a good combination.

What Dana Swift Did Right

The magic system is one of my favorite parts of this book. Dragons naturally form a metal casing over their scales for protection, and when a dragon bonds with a person, that person gains the ability to craft that metal. What could have been a throwaway detail becomes the backbone of an entire social hierarchy. Silver crafters are the elite. They are the only ones permitted to bond with silver dragons, to use silver for medicinal purposes, to hold certain positions. Everyone else exists below them in a structure that is enforced with real consequences. That kind of world building, where the magic and the politics are genuinely intertwined, is exactly what I want from a YA fantasy. It never felt like background dressing. It felt like a world someone actually thought through.

The characters are also a real strength here. All of them have completed arcs. All of them. That is rarer than it should be, and Swift earns it. James in particular has one of the most compelling character journeys in the book. Watching him slowly dismantle everything he thought he knew about dragons, about his family, and about himself is heartbreaking in the best way. There are chapters in this book that hit hard, and a lot of them belong to James.

I also want to talk about Hendrix, because one of the early chapters involving him genuinely wrecked me. It was the kind of scene that reminded me exactly how far humans will go to take advantage of animals, or in this case dragons, when there is something to be gained. Swift does not look away from that. The story shows the cruelty of the socio-political hierarchy through the treatment of the dragons themselves, and it gives the whole thing real moral weight.

The rivals-to-lovers romance is exactly as cute and tension-filled as it should be. Teenage rivals who clearly have feelings for each other and are both too stubborn to deal with it? Yes. Thank you. I was rooting for them from pretty early on.

The found family dynamic is warm and earned without being saccharine. The Walshes feel like a real household. By the end, I believed James belonged there.

Where It Fell Short

Here is where I have to be real with you.

The world building is genuinely interesting, but it does not go deep enough. There were moments where I wanted to understand more about how the metal crafting system worked, more about the history of the hierarchy, more about what life looks like outside the Walsh sanctuary and the Murphy family world. The bones are there, but some of them could have used more flesh.

The bigger issue for me was James' chapters in the second half of the book. Once his feelings for Farren are established, a significant stretch of his chapters becomes him pining after her. And I mean a lot of chapters. It starts to feel repetitive in a way that slows the momentum down. I get it. He likes her. We all get it. I wanted a little more plot movement in between the longing looks.

The dual POV voices are also a challenge. Farren and James are distinct characters, but their narrative voices can feel quite similar on the page. There were a few moments where I genuinely had to flip back and check whose chapter I was reading. In a dual POV book, that is a signal that the voices need more differentiation.

None of this knocked the book out of recommend territory for me. I genuinely loved this story. But those are the things that kept it from being a five star read.

A Note on Bex (Spoilers Ahead)

Final Thoughts

I am giving When Dealing With Dragons 4.5 stars, and I would recommend it enthusiastically to pretty much anyone who loves YA fantasy, dragons, or found family stories. The world is original, the magic is clever, the characters are real and fully realized, and there are emotional punches in this book that I was not prepared for.

If you have ever loved a dragon story, this one will feel both familiar and fresh. And if you have ever cared about the way animals are treated in worlds built on their exploitation, the moral core of this book will mean something to you.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press for an eARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.