You guys know the gist of this by now, right?
Synopsis from Goodreads:
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.
This book has me so conflicted. It was way to long topping out at over 530 pages. I normally don't care about the length of a book but the middle 300 pages of this one really wasn't necessary. But here's where it gets kind of weird. While I was reading the book, all I could think about was how it was too long and didn't need to be that way, BUT every time I put the book down all I wanted to do was pick it back up and read it. When I finished the book, I was so happy to be done with it, even though it was left open for the sequel (this is the first book in a planned trilogy), I was happy thinking that I wasn't going to read the second book and just be done with the series. Then, I started to miss the book. I missed reading it, getting caught up in this magical world, and I wanted so bad to be a part of all of it again. And now I've decided I'll read the second one when it comes out.
The one thing that really annoyed me about Nora was the fact that she was this well educated, independent, intelligent woman who was just. So. Damn. Stupid. My parents used to make fun of me for being so smart I was "stupid", I had no common sense. Nora is me but worse, and it really irked me that Barker wrote this character who was supposed to be a "thinking woman" and she ended up being a dunce. It really made me want to smack her upside the head and go "really!?!".
I don't think I would recommend this book to everyone. If you were someone who enjoyed magic and fiction (think Harry Potter but more adult), I would say go for it. Otherwise, no.
Here is the list so far:
1. Where'd you go Bernadette?
2. Sacre Bleu
3. Is Everyone Hanging out Without Me?
4. The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic
5. The Partly Cloudy Patriot
6. Assassination Vacation
7. The Alchemyst
8. The Graveyard Book
9. The Maze Runner
10. The Husband's Secret
11. Beauty Queens
12. The Dust of 100 Dogs
13. The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her own Making
14. The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books
I would love to hear about what you read this month!
I'm on Goodreads, if you'd like to add me.
4
9. The Maze Runner
14. The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books
I would love to hear about what you read this month!
I'm on Goodreads, if you'd like to add me.