Step into Magic

Portals to Whyland, Book 1

De: Day Leitao

Narrado por: Marlies Dubois

Not special. Not chosen. But she's got magical shoes.

Fourteen-year old Karina doesn’t know what she wants, but knows what she’s found - fascinating silver shoes. Fascinating, dangerous, and potentially evil. On the upside, they do bring cool visitors. When a princess invites her to go to Whyland and save her kingdom, of course she accepts. There’s that little “let’s destroy the shoes” detail she’s not crazy about, but hey, free trip, alternate world.

But Whyland is nothing like she expected. Karina finds herself stuck in a kingdom she doesn’t understand, with no clue on who to trust. Before saving anyone, she’d better save herself - if she figures out how.

To make matters worse, as much as the princess is fierce, determined, and brave, she'll jeopardize everything just to reconnect with her boyfriend, almost boyfriend, or whatever. And that might just be their doom.

Step into Magic is a fun YA portal fantasy adventure. If you like books with strong heroines, friendships between girls, subtle romance, and some mystery, you've found your book.

This is narrated in close third person with very snappy/sarcastic character voices.

©2018 Denise Marques Leitao (P)2019 Denise Marques Leitao

Interesting

This was a fun book, but the narrator drove me crazy. At times she sounded like a teenager, which worked well for the teenage characters, but did NOT work well for the adult males. She has some really irritating accents as well. She pronounces several words very interestingly, such as “girls-es” when speaking of something belonging to a group of girls. Overall, I’d rather not listen to her again.
The story itself is pretty good. It is definitely geared toward teens or preteens. The adventures of the characters are pretty improbable, but it is a work of fiction, so that’s ok. I don’t know that I’ll be in a hurry to read more from this author, but I’d recommend this book to a youngster that is interested in stories involving alternate realities.

Intriguing

Was an interesting story with interesting characters. I definitely enjoyed listening to it! Look forward to listening to the rest.

I kept wanting to find out how it would all resolv

I really enjoyed this story. There was continually enough mystery and suspense that I wanted to keep going and find out what would happen next and what was really going on. You were never totally sure who is the good guy and who is the bad guy, or are some of them kind of good and kind of bad...? That made it fun.

A great read

A story full of magic,trust,evil & friendship. Imagine buying a pair of shoes at a yard sale and then find out they are magic. Karina gets pulled into another dimension and her journey does not go as planned. She makes great friends along the way but still has a task to complete. I liked this story & the narrator did a great job.

Wow

Karina's world is changed forever when she finds a pair of shoes at a yard sale. They turn out to be magical shoes that are evil. She finds herself in another world looking to destroy the shoes before people can find her and take the shoes to use for evil. I found this story to be quite adorable. The characters were really sweet. The story line flowed very nicely. It was well put together. I think many teenagers and young adults will really enjoy the story. It's very age appropriate. I'm not going to give my opinion on whether or not I could connect with the characters. Half of the characters in the story were children. I feel that would be weird for me to say. I do think that they were all pretty amazing characters. I really don't hate the narration that Marlies Dubois did. I just think that she could have narrated it a bit better. She made most of the characters sound really whiny and airheaded. I'm sure that was not the intention. I'm also sure that I'm just being really picky. It did give me a headache though. I'm not going to lie. I really enjoyed this story quite a lot. I'm considering going back and reading it without narration. I think that the narrator's voice pitch kind of obscured the story for me just a little. As I said though, I don't think she did a bad job. It was just a bit too high pitch for me.

fairly good

So my only problem with this book is how nonchalant the main character is, she just takes all this weird magic stuff completely in stride without worry or complaint. It isn't very realistic, other than that the story is a pretty good coming of age tale.

i received a free copy of this book for review purposes, my review is voluntary and unbiased

Step into Magic review

Overall this was interesting fantasy novel, and worth the time in listening to. Five stars.

Magic shoes

The story was well written and the narrator did an awesome job. i also enjoyed the magic shoes.

I loved the story. The narration wasn't great.

A girl whisked away to a magical kingdom where she must call on he inner strength to save the innocent people of another world.

She meets friends along the way and discovers herself as she learns to wield the power of her magical shoes.

The story was well written and I really enjoyed it. The narrator wasn't great and the pace and tone of narration frequently distracted from the story.

I recommend it but you may want to increase the audible reading speed or read it in print format.

Fun, Fanciful, Fairy Tale

I've got to say, starting a book with a pair of magical shoes definitely caught my attention. Portal stories are also always a lot of fun.

Karina is drawn to a pair of shoes that cause havoc on the life of a friend who borrowed them, brought a witch from another world, then brought two princesses who took Karina (and her shoes) back to their world with them.

The book is non-stop adventure, as you would expect in a middle-grade book. However, it is completely confusing. The army is trying to take down the king, as are the insurgents who oppose the army, and then is the matter of that witch who apparently used to rule the kingdom before the king? Everyone has a reason to distrust everyone else and even Karina can't figure out who to trust, making her repeatedly choose whichever person or option has the best chance of sending her back to her home. It was a fun story with a lot of fun characters, filled with surprising twists and turns throughout.

I didn't love the narration. The narrator read clearly, but too many of the voices sounded whiny or wrong, making it tempting to dislike or mistrust the characters, even though their dialogue alone may not have led to that conclusion.

I received a free audiobook from Story Origin and have reviewed it willingly.