My Thoughts:

I loved Going Down in Flames, so I was eager to revisit Bryn and her friends in Bridges Burned.  I was a bit disappointed with it.  There was too much boy angst, and the non-ending diminished my enjoyment.  The action picked up in the second half, but it was all setup for the next book in the series.   The book doesn’t end so much as it tapers off to nothing.  I found this very frustrating.

Bryn is settling in at her new school, and as long as she has Zavien, she’s sure she can put up with the mockery and cold shoulders she’s receiving from some of the other students.  As a crossbred dragon, she’s looked on as something forbidden and aberrant, and with the controlling Directorate calling the shots for all of the dragons, her future doesn’t look too bright.  Even though her grandfather is a powerful Blue dragon, there are many in the dragon society who object to her existence.  Her parents, both promised to others, ran away from their restrictive culture and blended in as humans.  When Bryn turned 16, her heritage came banging on her door, and she was forced to attend the dragons’ academy to learn to control her powers.

One of the things I loved about the last book was Bryn’s forceful personality.  She’s pissed that her peers treat her like dirt, she’s fed up with people trying to kill her, and she can’t stand the rigid social structure that she’s been forced into.  Dragons can only marry dragons of the same clan, and even then, only with the Directorate’s approval.  It galls her that her future rests in their hands, and she’s infuriated that she can’t be with Zavien, the Black dragon she loves.  She didn’t take crap from anyone, and since she’s so powerful, she could defend herself from even the most obnoxious of her detractors.

Cut to Book 2, and I kept wondering what happened to that Bryn.  Now she is consumed with Zavien, letting him dictate their relationship.  Did I mention that he’s been promised to another, and that he’s engaged?  Because for the formalities involved in dragon marriage contracts, he can’t just void his engagement.  All through the first half of the book, I thought he was taking advantage of Bryn, twisting the truth about the future of their relationship and lying to her outright.  He really pissed me off.  I don’t like cheaters, and worse, I don’t like cheating heroes.  I didn’t find Zavien or his behavior heroic, and I wanted to slap Bryn and tell her to get over herself.  He wasn’t worth the grief he was putting her through.  She was like a shell of herself, and it infuriated me.  So deep was my aggravation that I almost set the book aside.

I kept doggedly at it, however, and things improved in the second half, after Bryn is forced to move in with her grandparents.  I think Zavien’s absence from the storyline at this point made it more palatable for me.  Jaxon, who I thought was a spoiled bully in the first book, quickly gained my favor.  He and Bryn are thrown together again and again as an enemy faction attempts to tear the dragon society apart at the seams.  This unknown enemy attacks the school on several occasions as they work to divide the dragon clans and cast suspicion on the Directorate, and these upticks in action kept me reading, especially the attack on Dragon’s Bluff.

After all of that intense, pulse-pounding action, the book just stops.  That was so frustrating!  There’s no question that I’ll continue with Book 3, but I’m hoping that Bryn focuses more on herself and less on Zavien, because, really, who wants a lying, cheating boyfriend, regardless of how good looking he is?  So, while Bridges Burned was a bit of a mixed bag for me, I am invested in the story and would like to see what happens next.

Excerpt:

On the drive back to school, Bryn reflected on how her life had recently gone to hell. It had all started when flames shot out of her mouth on her sixteenth birthday, proving she wasn’t completely human. Since then she’d been shipped off to a secret school for dragons—the Institute for Excellence—where she was learning how to control her shape-shifting dragon powers. She’d faced discrimination, death threats, and poisoning. She’d been blown up and involved in a battle to the death with a radical Revisionist member—and she’d been there for only a few months.

Though not everything about her new life was bad. She had a sexy boyfriend, Black dragon Zavien Blackthorn, and two good friends, Clint and Ivy. Being a crossbred dragon meant she had both the Red and Blue dragons’ breath weapons, fire and ice, and even though she was the only crossbreed, she could still outfly even the fastest Blue. Of course, that’s why some of the other Clans hated her. She’d upset the natural order of things in this color-coded world, where the Directorate dictated what Red, Black, Green, Orange, and Blue dragon Clan members could do as a profession and whom they could marry. It was absurd. Yet most dragons didn’t question it.

Part of Zavien’s appeal lay in the fact that he headed up the student Revisionist group that petitioned the Directorate to change outdated laws. Bryn glanced at Directorate lawyer Merrick Overton, who was driving the Cadillac SUV hybrid she was riding in. Her classmate and former nemesis Jaxon Westgate rode shotgun. She and Jaxon no longer hated each other. Scratch that: he no longer hated her based on his father’s vendetta against her mother, but that didn’t mean they were friends. Funny how saving someone’s life could turn you from enemies to…what? Not friends. Frenemies, maybe? Who knew? It’s not like she wanted to hang out with him, but there was a weird level of trust between them now that she didn’t know what to do with.

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