66 Books Like Dragons Walk Among Us

I gave a standing ovation to this lesson in being careful about what one wishes for and facing the consequences when one’s wishes come true in a heart-pounding fight of good versus evil. This gem is one of the most imaginative and descriptively written tales I ever read.

I could almost feel the heat from the sinister, demonic Ifrit breathing fire and the slash of its tail across the protagonist’s face. If you start out reading this book doubting the existence of djinns and parallel universes, you’ll be questioning your beliefs when you get to the end.

Some books keep you up all night, grab you by the throat, and don’t let go until the last page. This book is one. This heart-pounding, fast-paced page-turner holds nothing back and inserts readers face-first into the heart-wrenching reality of parental abuse and neglect. 

I love how this dark coming-of-age tale is woven with threads of teenage angst and dysfunctional relationships. My heart broke for the teenager thrust into an impossible situation who must make life-changing decisions based on nothing more than her instincts.

It should be required reading for every high school student as a lesson on what it means to take responsibility for one’s self by facing one’s challenges rather than looking away. 

Give me a YA novel that begins with a normal high school setting and suddenly veers into an utterly out-of-this-world scenario. This book takes the perennial issue of teenage angst and sends it into another plane. The cast is a group of believable but imperfect characters who are ordinary kids doing extraordinary things. 

The detailed descriptions of both the out-of-body experiences as well as the places in the astral plane that Abby and Logan travel are so exquisitely vivid that readers cross over from fantasy to the possibility of the experience being real. Readers are taken on a wild intergalactic rollercoaster ride at a breakneck pace. Reading it is as though Space Mountain and Lost in Space were celestial parents who gave birth to new species. 

Show me a gritty, graphic post-apocalyptic tale that still manages to create believable teenage characters with equal amounts of angst and audacity, and I’ll show you a fabulous tale you won’t soon forget. I held my breath when an ordinary teenager and her friend, still grieving their lost families and life as they knew it, stared death in the face as they made a perilous journey wrought with danger at every turn. They fought for survival while trying to save the life of a little girl.

I marveled at this spine-tingling story of survival, young love, loss, trust, and the inner strength one must summon to face adversity created by both human fallibility and fate. 

I have to admit, if I had the ability to see vamps, that would be both fascinating and scary. And apparently, SPI (Supernatural Protection and Investigation) feels the same way.

Makenna Fraser is a supernatural detective for SPI who is tasked with discovering who’s behind a magic-infused drug that allows humans to see vamps, monsters, and other creatures. The clock is ticking, and the city of New York’s—and the entire world’s fate rest in her hands.

This series is a cozy fantasy with a warm blanket and piping hot tea. Breen, a young lady from the United States who is in search of adventure, travels to Ireland and finds more than she’s ever bargained for.

I love this series so much for the adventure and the found family waiting to join her in the fun. Breen also finds magical portals, dragons, and a dangerously handsome magical man.

At a time when I desperately needed a cozy read filled with friendships and new loves, Nora Roberts, the queen of romance, hit all the best high notes for me with The Awakening.

In this book, we get to see the dichotomy of good versus evil in dragons, but both believe they have chosen the righteous path. Saphira and Eragon care for each other deeply and although they fight and argue, they have formed an unbreakable bond. Eragon is the “chosen one” and Saphira makes sure he knows it. She selected him. I particularly like the training that they go through with the experienced dragon rider, and enjoy how the experienced dragon plays a significant part in educating the new pair.

More on the wacky side, and far more entertaining, is Terence McKenna’s True Hallucinations: Being an Account of the Author’s Extraordinary Adventures in the Devil’s Paradise. For those who will never try “heroic doses” of psilocybin mushrooms deep in the Colombian jungle, this is a wild, vicarious ride, an amalgam of science, literature, myth, and exotica from an adventurer whose genuine inquisitiveness in things psychedelic goes hand in hand with mythomania—what an exuberant explosion of literary and philosophical high kitsch! If not persuaded, there follows the endorsement from The New York Times: “The polysyllabic sentences he lards with intellectual references are an attempt to lend credibility to the otherwise debunked subject of drugs.” Yes, a hatchet job from The New York Times could not make for a more valuable endorsement.

When my mother died, a friend insisted, “Now you’ll come to know her in ways you never imagined.” I thought the notion was ludicrous. My mother and I were close, our relationship strong. As it turns out my friend was right. In Watch Me Disappear, Janelle Brown explores this idea. When Billie Flanagan disappears, her husband and teenaged daughter Olive find out more than they could have imagined about Billie’s secret life. 

A story with magic and mystery, like my first book, Daughter of the Burning City is unlike any book I have read. The magic system within the book is called “Jynx-work” and the users of the magic often inhabit the traveling city circus of Gomorrah Festival, a place of vice and sin shunned by the more pious world around them. 

Sorina is the first illusion worker in years. She creates tangible illusions, ones with personalities and free will to exist outside of her control. But when they start dying like real people would in a series of gruesome murders, there appears more to Sorina’s magic than meets the eye. I love magic mysteries because they keep readers engaged and wanting to unravel the questions left behind during shocking twists.