The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic

By Emily Croy Barker

Book Overview

An imaginative story of a woman caught in an alternate world where she will need to learn the skills of magic to survive Nora Fischer s dissertation is stalled and her boyfriend is about to marry another woman. During a miserable weekend at a friend s wedding, Nora wanders off and walks through a portal into a different world where she s transformed from a drab grad student into a stunning beauty. Before long, she has a set of glamorous new friends and her romance with gorgeous, masterful Raclin is heating up. It s almost too good to be true. Then the elegant veneer shatters. Nora s new fantasy world turns darker, a fairy tale gone incredibly wrong. Making it here will take skills Nora never learned in graduate school. Her only real ally and a reluctant one at that is the magician Aruendiel, a grim, reclusive figure with a biting tongue and a shrouded past. And it will take her becoming Aruendiel s student and learning magic herself to survive. When a passage home finally opens, Nora must weigh her real life against the dangerous power of love and magic. For lovers of Lev Grossman's The Magicians series ("The Magicians "and "The Magician King") and Deborah Harkness's All Souls Trilogy ("A Discovery of Witches" and "Shadow of Night")."

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670023663
• ISBN13: 9780670023660
• Release Date: August 2013
• Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books
• Length: 563 Pages
• Weight: 1.73 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.8" x 6.3" x 9.2"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Soothes my English Major heart

I'm currently reading for the third time. Nora is my favorite main character of all time. She feels like the quintessential grad student; smart and makes mistakes, sees the patterns in things (especially literary), has relationships with awful men who overlook her... I could go on. This is what we all wish would happen to us, right? That we get kidnapped by a handsome guy then find out we have magical abilities!

Found in the self help section...

I loved this book so much I immediately had to find the second book and have loaned it out to everyone I can. It builds to something you don't expect, and you can sense the layers that sometimes catch and hold Nora back. I loved the feeling of being immersed in the struggle Nora has and the quips are fantastic! Let this story and the writing suck you in. There is a bit of time when the story seems to drag, but it fully matches what the character is going through. I'm looking forward to rereading this series soon.

Love it

After a somewhat so-so start, the story picks up and it becomes difficult to tear yourself away from the book.

Don't do it

This sounded like a fun Narnia like fantasy, but it was not. Unless you are a 30+ year old women who has never been in a relationship of any kind, even a close friendship, with a man, you're not going to like this. The only magical thing about this book was the marketing team. I did not read the whole thing after over 100 pages of WTF, I skimmed the rest until close to the ending. I went to read some reviews which confirmed that the middle was as bad as I thought it would be, worse actually. The voice was really good, but it was kind of like listening to a pleasant sounding drunk telling you a story that makes no sense to anyone but them. O.K. I'll stop now.