Fourth Wing Novel by Rebecca Yarros

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I enjoyed reading it for the most part, but it's a 3-3.5 ⭐ read for me. I'm still gonna read the next book at some point! I wanna know where it goes from here haha.

Things I liked:
I really liked the dragon school and war plotlines! Though the school plot kind of dragged in the middle.
Dragons! Yay! I liked all of the dragons and their personalities.
I liked the disability representation for the most part. I did have some problems with it, but I'm glad it was written about realistically on a main character. And I was happy to see that her joint issues getting better as the book went on was realistic and not because of magic or something similar! There's several ways that Violet could have been cheaply cured but the author didn't do that, kudos.
I liked seeing Violet grow and get more confident as the book progresses, and I liked seeing her outsmarting her opponents and other challenges.

Things I didn't like:
The romance plot. I didn't think Violet and Xaden had any chemistry. All they had for each other was insatiable lust , then at the end of the book it suddenly flips to super sappy lovey-dovey stuff. Just didn't feel realistic, and I didn't care when they got together lol.
Violet being so damn special. I knew I was in for a ride when chapter one mentioned her special half-silver hair that's always half-silver no matter what length it is lol. Her only weakness seems to be her disability, which isn't great. She bonds not one, but two dragons, which no one has ever done before. And one of them is a baby, and babies never bond! And both of her dragons give her special powers that haven't been seen in at least a century! I don't mind some special-ness, but the amount that Violet is special is kind of annoying.
The characters (besides Violet) were super flat and not well-developed. I mean, we know next to nothing about Rhiannon, and she's supposed to be Violet's best friend! And we're told that Dain is a childhood best friend, but it's not shown in the text at all. He feels more like an old acquaintance that starts to get controlling. Xaden gets some development, but it feels sudden and kind of unnatural.