Flying Blind Review

Okay, kind of nervous about this review. I am not too sure how well I can write a bad review without sounding too criticizing. I just recently read Flying Blind by Deborah Cooke and honestly, there wasn't much about it that I enjoyed. I had just finished reading Firelight so maybe it was because I read such similar stories back to back and I just happened to like one more. But in my mind that proved that that story could be done well.

Flying Blind is about a 15 year old girl named Zoe who is desperately awaiting to hit puberty, not to fit in with all the other girls her age, but that means she gets her dragon powers. Zoe is a Pyr, a dragon shape-shifter, and she is also going to be the Wyvern, the only female Pyr. A lot of expectations are put on her to finally start to shift. In one overly cliched girl fight in the locker room, Zoe accidentally starts to change. From that time on she is sent away to Boot Camp, a training program that all the boy Pyrs have been going to and it is Zoe's first time. Boot Camp is where she is supposed to learn how to harness her powers and train to be the next generation of Pyr. Instead Boot Camp turns out to be more of an adventure than she planned for it to be.

As far as the characters go in this book I think Cooke took every cliche she had ever heard of teenagers and mashed them into each character. Zoe's best friend is the nerdy girl with braces and glasses and is the math tutor to all the hot guys. Zoe is self-centered and always concerned with if a guy likes her and how annoying her lack of powers is. Isabelle is the perfect, gorgeous girl you want to hate. The guys are all overly attractive in some way or another and act like Zoe is amazing.

Writing seemed very young. After finding out that Deborah Cooke is a romance author, it did all make sense. Flying Blind does read like a romance novel for young girls. Every guy has rippling muscles and falls into at least one type of fantasy guy. It may have been too young a read for me to appreciate. I just wanted more substance. The lists of history and mythology of the story didn't really help, in fact I found them kind of annoying and took me out of the story.

All in all, I don't think I would recommend this book. I gave it 2 out of 5 stars, I regret buying it. And into the closet it goes...sigh.