Henchgirl by Rita Stradling

Title: Henchgirl

Author: Rita Stradling

Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy

Publication: January 12, 2016

My Rating: 4/5

Source: NetGalley

The children of dragons and humans, the dracons, control eighty percent of the world’s governments. Humans worldwide are either subservient or prey. On the small vacation island of Mabi, humans call for war.

Sixteen year old Dakota Kekoa lives a double life. By day, she pretends to be a human to infiltrate Mabi Academy, a 'human's only' high-school. At night, she works as a henchman for her draconic mafia family, utilizing her ability to steal and manipulate emotions.

When Dakota’s human friend is kidnapped, she takes on the mission to find her. This is not just any mission though; she is diving head first into the escalating conflict between humans and dracons. As more girls disappear and some are discovered dead, Dakota realizes her first honorable mission may also be her last.

**I received a free eARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review**

Dakota, a teenage girl working undercover for her dracon family, has a special power: she can see people's souls. All dracons inherit "aspects", which are pretty much considered superpowers, and that's one of Dakota's.

One day a human girl she knows from school is kidnapped, and Dakota tries her best to find her. But she's not on her own. A very powerful and well-known dracon is helping her, and he also has other plans in mind when it comes to Dakota: he wishes to make her his future bride.

I loved reading about Wyvern and Dakota looking for clues leading to the missing girl, although I have to admit that I didn't like the guy that much in the beginning, but that changed after he started to show a little bit more of his true self. Wyvern thinks he's a bad boy, but he really isn't.

Between him and Keanu, I didn't know which one of them I preferred at first. Keanu seemed like a nice guy when Dakota hung out with him before things started getting crazy. And Wyvern was nice too after a while, what did bother me about him though was how possessive he was, but that's apparently a dragon thing... Oh and his driving is awful.

I also admired Dakota a lot, she worked very hard to take care of her family. But why did they have to live in a huge, fancy house when they didn't even have any money?

And it made me a bit mad to see how sexist dracon rules were. So, dracon women are trained for marriage since birth, and a male dracon can have as many wives who are able to reproduce as he can afford.

Because thing is, too much dragon blood makes dracon women barren, but men don't have this problem... Am I the only one thinking that this should be the other way around? Shouldn't the women have more husbands since there are more men who can reproduce? No? Or am I just confused?... Anyway, I'm not a big fan of the way female dracons are treated, it's like those men don't want to acknowledge it's the 21st century already. Like it says in the book: "Dracons are old-fashioned in the worst ways". The good thing is Dakota doesn't want to be a part of that. She's a soldier.

But seriously though! Her grandpa has 53 living sons and even more daughters than that!

Part of her family is still amazing, I really loved uncle Bobby. And her sisters were nice too, I liked her relationship with Lorelei. And all those names were great, Mabi kinda felt like Hawaii, I think.

The author later explains that the story is loosely inspired by Pride & Prejudice, which just confirmed to me that Dakota's older sister was, just as I thought, a dracon version of Jane Bennet (I know my Pride & Prejudice).

And finally, that villain! I was not expecting that, it was very well done! But I'm going to need the sequel, like, right now. I want to know what happens next! I love that Dakota respects herself so much and knows she's worth it!!

Oh and did I mention that there aren't just dracons in the story, but also other creatures like vampires, werewolves and witches? Yup.

Have you read this book or anything similar?

Thank you for reading! Bye-Bye! ♥