The Adventurer's Guide to Dragons (and Why They Keep Biting Me) by Wade Albert White
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

I grabbed this book for my daughter not realizing that it was the second in a series. That said, we were a little thrown off when it picked up by mentioning a bunch of stuff that happened in another (unread) book. Still, it wasn't too hard to follow along.

The main driving force behind this book was the humor. The best bits were the excerpts from Ann's adventurer's guide that showed up between chapters. Most of those were hilarious. That humor was carried through the whole story, though the execution didn't always carry over as well. The overall experience was sort of like watching a stand-up comedian on improve night. Some of the jokes hit gold while others fell flat.

There was a good deal of adventure and some fun action scenes. I wasn't super invested in the characters. Maybe that comes from jumping in at book 2? If I was to pick one thing that bothered me most it would probably be the character interactions. There were a few too many times when I was thrown out of the story and found myself thinking, "No one would ever act like that." I think the idea was to make the interactions funny, but the author often slipped from silly to ridiculous. (But maybe White was aiming for ridiculous. *shrug* Just know it's there so you're forewarned.)

The writing itself was fairly straightforward, which is good for a middle grade book. There were a few plot twists that seemed like a bit of a stretch, but we glided past them easily with a healthy suspension of disbelief. My daughter enjoyed the book enough that when we finished she begged my to buy the first one, which I did. Since she's in the target age range, I'd say that's recommendation enough. ;)

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