I saw this in my local bookstore and immediately picked it up because the cover and title were so cute and the premise seemed adorable and I was looking forward to a great cosy read. Serves me right for judging a book by it's cover because this was so incredibly disappointing. 

The writing is very chunky - infos and descriptions often came in chunks which did not make it very engaging. The characters were very flat and cringy. As much as I would absolutely love baby dragons too, I felt that the FMC's dragon obsession was overdone. The constant baby voice and nicknames (goglu, golu-molu, cutie pie, etc) were just too cringy. The MMC's character was not very consistent - he was supposed to be aloof and cold and dark but somehow had instalove for the FMC. By the 3rd meeting, they were already missing each other. 

I just feel very disengaged from the characters, the world and the plot itself. I'm so incredibly sad because I was hoping to really love this but I really am not fond of the writing style and I don't think I'll come to like it within the next 100 pages so I'm not going to waste my time and just DNF this at 25%.

I was really looking forward to this book and the premise had so much potential. 

Unfortunately, the execution fell short. I know the FMC is really young, she's only 21, but more often than not, she is very immature and acts like a brat. From the getgo, it was cemented that the MMC hates girls who act like brats but he's blind to our FMC's brattiness (ofc he is) and excuses it because she's "young" and "curious" and "it's adorable" even though he himself knows it's hypocritical as he has literal employees who are 21 and he holds them to that high standard of acting a certain way. 

Also, the intense back and forth between "i want you" and "no we shouldn't" was giving me so much whiplash. The switch is often abrupt and jarring and it made me want to throw my kindle across the room. 

Maybe I might pick this up again in the future but DNF for now. 

Uninteresting and not engaging.

In theory, I should have liked this. Perhaps the author raised the bar by pulling names like Harry Potter, Fourth Wing, Zodiac Academy + Dramione romance. Perhaps it was the publishing company's decision. These claims are quite the stretch in my opinion, perhaps just to get people to give this book a try. It's one thing for a reviewer to state these claims, it's another coming from the official source. If you need such tactics, it may prove that this book isn't very good. 

This is an academia setting with vampires. Blake is not remotely close to a Draco Malfoy besides being born blonde from a prominent family. He WISHES he could be Draco Malfoy, at least he would have some personality and redeeming qualities. Heads up: He's already betrothed to another girl. It was arranged but I hate OW drama even if it's not by his choice. And he does have a somewhat good relationship with her but she's also a bitch which makes the whole dynamic so annoying. 

Then comes our main girl. The only time when Medra resembles Hermione is her immediate thought that humans are slaves to the vamps and that she needs to do more research. Speaking as a Harry Potter fan, I liked Hermione's character though I recognized that I would hate her irl and we wouldn't be friends but wow Medra is so much worse. She's a woke version of Hermione - constantly being snarky and sassy to everyone and acting like she's all that. I know it's the trend now to have "strong" FMCs because no one likes damsels in distress anymore but why would you act like this when you don't know what's going on, why you're here and what everyone is capable of? Medra wakes up on a pile of corpses and her first instinct is to start mouthing off and pissing off the people who found her like she isn't vulnerable and lost. She continues to keep doing this instead of pretending to be meek and gathering sympathy and allies and gain intelligence. I find her incredibly stupid for acting like a brat, she could have been smarter than this. Honestly, Hermione would have kept her mouth shut and bided her time. Normally I don't do this and compare books and characters like this but the author was asking to be compared by making such bold claims in the first place.

So far, the only redeeming parts of the book are the great side characters. Why can't the two main leads be more like them because the side characters like Florence and Naveen, and the professors are way more likeable and easy to root for. This showed that the author was capable of writing good characters but chose to make Medra and Blake annoying af - probably to push the enemies to lovers narrative but was that really necessary? 

DNFing at 40% and about 200 pages in. The characters are too insufferable and stupid to drag myself through another 300 pages. I do want to see and experience the dragons but I don't have the patience to wait for Medra and Blake to be more mature and I doubt that they will improve.

It just wasn't my cup of tea unfortunately.