This book inspires people to try regardlessof your flaws

between how Violet figures a way to scale the gauntlet to her claiming her dragons

and finds her place in the complicated ethics or surviving a school. Where you either learn to fly or die trying

compelling, despite the simplistic/repetitive prose. consent-conscious "enemies to lovers" is refreshing.

need a break from the author's style but will probably continue the series; maybe not in audiobook format though, the male narrator tries a little too hard to sound dark and edgy (the text has enough of that tyvm.)

I don't care what anyone says, I love this story
Is it a big revolutionary story?? No. When did I ever make it seem like I read those kind of stories??? I am here for a good time and I can't wait to keep reading this series as it comes out <3

I listened to this as an audio book throughout some field work this summer. I saw some of my favorite booktubers post reviews, and as they mentioned it being a book with dragons in it, I wanted to read it for myself without having my own thoughts about the book altered by others, so I immediately checked it out without listening to their reviews. I probably would not have read it at all if I had actually listened to the reviews before reading, so it was probably for the best I did so. It was just something light to listen to before going to bed after a long day of hiking and mapping. 
I have. A lot of thoughts. Copying and pasting from some ranting I did to friends.
To start with the dragons part:
There was not nearly enough dragons for a book about dragon riders. Of the three dragon books I read over field camp, this one did marginally better than the Adamantine Throne at explaining dragons and dragon riding, but it also... wasn't great. They hinted at the different types of dragons, but really only enough to point out the Big Scary Powerful one and the Super Special Mysterious one, as well as give us just enough info on the other types to scrape by. I would have loved to know more.
Overall?
The story felt super slapped together. It kinda kept dragging itself on and on without any real end goal to work towards except possibly the end of the year? The main character was essentially thrown trial after trial we as readers weren't informed of well enough in advance to keep balance. By the end of the book I was like 'ok, what challenge or trial is going to follow this one?' a better way to have done this would probably be to explain how the first year as a dragon rider goes. That way the readers could expect better what was coming. Violet (the main character) knew what was coming next, but we as readers only figure out RIGHT when its about to become a problem.
Violet as a character... doesn't suck. She's pretty bog standard YA/New Adult main character. She's got Special Hair because she was sick as a child, and is the daughter of a dragon rider general. She's smart and sort of an "underdog" character because she wasn't trained to be a dragon rider like a lot of the others, she wanted to be a scribe. And of course being a dragon rider involves a lot of deadly challenges and a lot of cadets die before they even get to become a rider, ect ect. 
If anything I think that the over the top brutality of the rider's quadrant is... honestly a detriment to the story. Sure, it adds tension and all that, but the Deadly Challenges that make up the most of the book get a little repetitive and boring as it goes on. The constant LIFE OR DEATH CHALLENGE! Sort of becomes meh. There's no contrast to it, so it becomes boring. Never was I really afraid that Violet wasn't going to make it through whatever next ~deadly challenge~ thrown at her, because she had plot armor so thick it was literally in the story itself.
What could have been a lot more intriguing would be if they INTRODUCED THE CONFLICT OF THE CLIMAX OF THE BOOK A LOT SOONER INSTEAD OF VAGUELY HINTING AT IT THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE BOOK. I know you gotta have drama between the bad boy romantic lead and the main character but it was. Dumb.
Going from that, we get to talk about the ✨love triangle✨ which of course is between Violet, her Male Best Friend From Childhood, and the Badboy Wingleader. BFFC is Dain, and Badboy is Xaden. Dain starts out as being a decent option until he is absolutely obliterated by the narrative and turned into a pushy asshole who

violates Violet's boundaries with his magic

. Xaden is made out to be the Better Option by the narrative, but he's a controlling asshole! They also pull a dragonriders-of-pern with

Violet and Xaden's dragons being mates forcing the two of them into bed together whenever the dragons decide to get intimate with each other

, which makes me feel very icky tbh. Also Xaden calls Violet "Violence" for the whole book and it is so incredibly stupid and makes no sense because she poisons half the people she has to fight so she doesn't actually have to fight them, and then

struggles to kill people EVEN WHEN HER OWN LIFE IS AT RISK!

The twists were all very predictable.

When Violet goes to bond with a dragon, I was first expecting her to bond with the Black Morningstar-Tail because it was introduced as the Most Powerful, and then the other special dragon, the Feather-tail, showed up at the presentation. So then I was expecting her to bond with that one, and then that protecting it was a test and she'd actually bond with the Morningstar-tail and GUESS WHAT she bonds both of them because she is so special :)
The other major twists in the book were also very predictable, and they were both only in there to cause more Romantic Conflict between Violet and Xaden, which was dumb.
Also there was literally no reason to change the point of view for the last chapter you could have had Violet narrate the last chapter still.

I can't even really say I was let down by hype I saw elsewhere because I hadn't heard anything about this book until seeing a review from Cari Can Read and going "ooh dragons!"
Would I still read the second book? Yeah probably.