Dragons Walk Among Us (The Allison Lee Chronicles Book 1)

Allison Lee is an amateur photographer in high school. She loves photography and is even recognized often in her school paper, and by judges in a contest. She struggles with the abuse she suffers from the popular girls at school. Often snubbed and ridiculed, she is just a girl trying to survive the cruelty of high school. All of that changes when she is attacked and suffers blindness, only to have her eyesight saved with an experimental new procedure. Armed with her new prosthetic eyes, she begins to uncover a whole new world that exists alongside the one she has always known. Now she and her friends aren’t just hoping to survive high school, but hoping to survive… period.

Dan Rice’s debut novel is masterfully created with fun characters and great character development. He has also created a whole new dimension so well-crafted the reader begins to suspect it truly exists. The overuse of certain words does begin to grate on the nerves and distract from the story, and the same descriptors’ use becomes repetitive. The friendships evolve wonderfully over the course of the story. However, the repeated focus on climate change, racism, and other political ideals sometimes feels like a forced message that is not integral to the storyline. The pacing of the story also feels unbalanced, as it begins with a slow build only to move so quickly at the end that the reader feels like they skipped something. This imaginative beginning to Allison Lee’s story is sure to entertain, and is a quick read to brighten the day.

Cara Cieslak