The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic

By: Emily Croy Barker

Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan

Length: 26 hrs and 22 mins

Publisher's summary

Emily Croy Barker’s riveting debut novel is a must-read for fans of Lev Grossman and Deborah Harkness. The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic follows grad student Nora Fischer as she stumbles through a portal into a magical world.

Having been transformed from drab to beautiful, Nora finds herself surrounded by glamorous friends. Life seems perfect. But then things take a terrible turn, and Nora must learn magic from a reclusive ally if she is to have any hope of survival...

©2013 Emily Croy Barker (P)2013 Recorded Books

The not so bright woman’s guide to magic

Poor Nora, who drank the koolaid and got sucked in at every turn. There were things I liked about this book enough to finish it, although I was pretty frustrated from about the beginning to the midpoint, then the 3/4 mark to the end.

How can the author call her the thinking woman if she falls for literally every trap. It was like a nightmare I once had that went on forever, interesting in ways but no satisfying resolution

Semi-additive

The beginning starts off a bit slow but nice it gets coming, away you go! I feel like there was more and it just stopped—looking forward to perhaps a sequel.

Epic tale of magic, deception, love and conflict!

Loved it!!! It's a delightful and engrossing tale with new ideas on magic and magical worlds. Great world building and believable circumstances in the fantastical realm. The only thing I don't like is having to wait for the sequel. LOL

Well thought and written story

Good story. A bit slow and pedantic at times. At least that is how I perceived it. The narrator’s character voices were not really good. Boring and seemingly old. Nora is not a very agreeable person. Asks so many questions that at times I found myself screaming at the book … for a PhD she does not display much intelligence or deduction skills. Annoying to the limit. And the voice used to depict her is boring and way too old for her. Many of the voices were I’ll chosen to represent the characters.
This book is being compared to the All Souls trilogy but apart from the magic and all, Deborah Harkness’s writing elicited way more response and feeling from me than this one.
All in all, as I said before, the story idea is interesting and entertaining, though the intent to make it relatable to Pride and Prejudice is doubtful.
I will read the sequel pulling teeth at the same narrator. (Though I am sure she could do voice overs in a different way as some of the characters in the book are pretty well represented)
Read with an open mind!

Entertaining but long

I wanted to like this more. Especially in the beginning I found the character of Nora to be irritating. But the story was engaging enough that I carried through till the end and it was better the longer it went on but it was still a little too long.

Fully enthralled

I love this book, especially when she starts doing magic. I love the gratitude and connected aspect of appreciating everything and becoming one with all around you.

Great escape!!!

I'm not going to tell u about the story because u can read that. It is however a great adventure. it pulls u out of your world and you don't know what's going to happen when you listen to the next step. it doesn't have a great romance but there are some subtle undertones if it. My only disappointment is that there is no sequel so u are just left wanting more of the story. if u want another great series, try "The Discovery of Witches" series. It has another smart irreverent women but with more romance. I like these books so much I wait until I have forgotten parts so I can enjoy listening to them again.

Interesting idea, fell a bit flat.

Narrator did a wonderful job. She had distinct voices for the various characters, and tried to give life to the story. However, the long pauses between parts and chapters was distracting (I kept checking to make sure the app was still running properly), and there were a few sentences cut short by poor editing.
The story itself was very long. I found myself wanting it to end, but it had a pretty unsatisfying ending. "The thinking woman" was pretty dense, and it was pretty much a retelling of pride and prejudice.

An excellent story line!

The author really hit upon all cylinders with this novel. I should think that a sequel would be in the offing!

Quick-Quick-Slow

I was a bit surprised that the beginning flew by so fast given that it is such a long book. I expected that it would be a slow character driven book splashed with a bit a magic. I was right in that there is a splash of magic, and it was cheracter driven, however I did not have a strong connection with any of them. They were good cheracters but I just never felt trully emmersed in the story and I think that part of it has to do with the pace of the book.
Just as I was beginning to understand some, we are introduced to new cheracters and leave the others behind and that was disappointing. Set aside the pace and lack of connection to the cheracters, I was also a bit disappointed that there was so little magic...and learning of the craft.

The narrator did a lovely job. I increased the speed to 1.15 as I found it a bit slow but her performance was really engaging.

I recommend this book if you are in a bit of a slump and don't need anything too crazy.