March 2025: Leading Lady Lez Sci-fi/Fantasy Book Club

Leading Lady Lez Sapphic Book Club
We are a book club dedicated to reading sci-fi and fantasy novels that feature a significant sapphic love story. Each month, we explore bold, imaginative, and emotionally rich stories that center queer women in speculative worlds.

### March Pick: When Women Were Dragons

📖 Author: Kelly Barnhill
📖 Pages: 384
Get ready to soar, Leading Lady Lez! When Women Were Dragons is everything we love—bold, unapologetic, and bursting with feminist fire. Kelly Barnhill delivers a speculative masterpiece that reimagines the 1950s through a sapphic, rebellious lens, where women refuse to stay caged and instead take flight—literally. It’s a story of transformation, resilience, and claiming your power in a world that fears what it can’t control.

Synopsis:
Alex Green grows up in a world much like ours—except for one pivotal event: the Mass Dragoning of 1955, when thousands of wives and mothers suddenly transformed into dragons and disappeared. Society refuses to speak of it, leaving Alex with unanswered questions about her aunt Marla, who dragoned, and her mother, who did not. As she navigates the silence, secrecy, and shifting expectations of her life, Alex uncovers truths about power, love, and the cost of being forced to stay small.

In this powerful and lyrical novel, Barnhill explores rage, memory, and the defiant act of taking up space. When Women Were Dragons is a stunning meditation on feminism, queer identity, and the freedom to embrace one’s true self—no matter the consequences.