From This Day Forward: Dragon Shifters of Derkesthai Academy by Mackenzie Lucas

From This Day Forward is the second story in the Derkesthai Academy Dragon Shifter series--a hot contemporary paranormal romance series with mystery and suspense elements where dragon shifters hunt a magickal hoard thief who threatens to bring down the entire dragon mage race. In the small town of Mystic Springs, only love and betrayal can show true character and the best signs are those hidden. Join April and Noah as they fight an unidentified evil who threatens everything they value.

Noah Easton, a Special Forces dragon shifter, escapes the torture of a hoard thief bent on stealing dragon hoard stones and their elemental power from the mages who possess them, but the situation becomes personal when the hoard thief targets April, the woman he loves. He must return to his hometown of Mystic Springs to protect his own hoard from a magickal threat he cannot identify before he loses everything.

April is a modern day oracle. She reads tea leaves and just about anything else that can predict coming events. However, past abandonment issues make her resistant to reading her own signs. But when evil comes to Mystic Springs, April must face her biggest fears of abandonment and betrayal in order to save what’s most important to her. Only by studying the past and owning her future can she stop a magickal criminal who threatens to steal everything she’s ever loved and destroy the one dragon mage who holds her heart always and forever. - Goodreads


I never really felt connected to the main characters. April and Noah both are nice and decent people, and they're both interesting because of their magical abilities. This might sound strange, seeing as how this is a fictional story, but the characters just never felt "real" to me. They were really fake and insincere the way they acted.

One thing from the very beginning that I guess annoyed me with this, or more like just confused my brain, was that the town is called Mystic Springs. I'm a huge Vampire Diaries fan and my brain just kept wanting to change it to Mystic Falls, which is then how I fall down the rabbit hole of smokin hot vampires (Damon fan here!). haha

I almost wonder if I didn't like this just because it is a novella and not an actual novel. Although, it was longer than I would expect a novella to be. I don't think I'll be checking out the other books this this series, I just didn't like this enough. 


I would like to find more books with dragons or dragon shapeshifters, cause this did spark my interest in that subject. Any suggestions?