Author: Emily Croy Barker
Publisher: Viking Penguin House
Genre: Magical Realism, Romance
Book Description: Earning comparisons to wildly popular fantasy novels by Deborah Harkness and Lev Grossman, Emily Croy Barker’s enchanting debut offers an intelligent escape into a richly imagined world. And with an appealing female protagonist, cinematic storytelling, wry humor, and wonderfully clever literary references, The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic is sure to capture the imaginations of readers everywhere.
During a miserable weekend at a friend’s wedding, eager to forget about her disastrous breakup and stalled dissertation, Nora Fischer wanders off and somehow finds herself in another realm. There, she meets glamorous Ilissa—who introduces Nora to a decadent new world—and her gorgeous son Raclin. But when the elegant veneer of this dreamland shatters, Nora finds herself in a fairy tale gone incredibly wrong. And the only way she can survive is by learning real magic herself.
Thoughts:
It's a very straightforward romance story with dimensional travel. It's a nice and easy-to-get-through story, but not a very fast read. We have plenty of descriptions of the world, the society, and the war. But you get nuggets at a particular time that makes it seems like its meant to be a plot device, but it makes sense if a stranger falls into the world the native dwellers are not going to sit them down to explain everything and will leave them to stumble because they do not think to explain the basic of the world I mean its simply logical sense, right? Except if you do not grow up in the place then oh well catching up is going to be complicated.
This feels like a very realistic time/dimensional traveler, Nora is at first confused not realizing that she is no longer in her world, but she has a good reason to not realize at first. It starts with Nora living a very average life. She is studying for her master's degree in Literature, having very average struggles, losing interest in her thesis, and not being able to communicate effectively with her adviser because they are human and have their own life to distract them. She is struggling in her personal life, her long-time boyfriend plans a visit because he has an important conversation with her. Nora is anticipating the marriage proposal, she's trying to decide if an October wedding would be too soon. He does not propose, he breaks up with her and lets her know that he is planning the October wedding she was envisioning, but with a different bride. Well with that said he leaves, he can't stay the weekend with her after breaking up. That same weekend Nora had been invited to a friend's wedding. She meets her ex-boyfriend, and it does not go awesomely.
She is struggling with her emotions and decides to go out for a run in the mountain, without telling her friend. And she ends up finding a cemetery with nice poetry from there she meets a gorgeous woman. And that's when her adventure really begins.
She is enjoying her time, the woman provides the most lavish parties with gorgeous people. They are fairies but not the type that Nora has been imagining in her world. She gets enchanted and every tie she is suspecting, she gets swayed away from logical thinking.
Eventually, she gets rescued from the fairies. And that's when her logical thinking is thrown back to her. She has a very hard time accepting her new situation at first she has a little mental breakdown. This is a reasonable reaction if you ask me, the first thing she thinks is that she is hallucinating, or had a head injury and she's confused and her mind has broken so she's crazy, then she decides that the people here are trying to keep her kidnapped and make her feel crazy for some twisted reason.
The rest of the story is predictable, we have a big focus on a war between magicians, and political intrigue. It did feel like it ran for a long time, and the romance was not my interest as usual but I see why people might fall for it.
I will continue the series probably, even if I was a bit annoyed at the slow building of the romance, we do have the same miscommunication as we do in almost every other slow-burn fantasy story. But it was not awful. I like the world, and I'm interested but this is very romance-focused, therefore, my enjoyment kind of took a hit, but I'm sure this is a me-problem, I would still recommend this as a good option for an Adult Romance Fantasy story.
I used this for challenges:
Library books.
Start new series.
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