Nora Fischer is having a bad day: her boyfriend has just announced his engagement to another woman, her Ph.D. thesis advisor expresses doubts about her academic career and her cat's been hit by a car. So when Nora wanders into the garden of an heiress, Ilissa, who invites her to a series of splendid parties, it seems the perfect opportunity to take time for herself. Then she meets Ilissa's handsome son, Raclin, who initiates a whirlwind courtship. By the time Ilissa and Raclin are revealed to be magical beings with unsavory intentions, Nora is sunk too deep in the enchantment to escape.
Soon Nora finds herself in a world where the milieu is medieval, magic takes the place of technology and an amoral Faerie-like race called Faitoren--the same people who seduced Nora into their world--are perpetually at war with the human population. As Nora struggles to find her place in this world where her academic skills, and even the English language, are suddenly useless, she is alternately aided and thwarted by the magician Aruendiel.
In The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic, Emily Croy Barker presents an intelligent, no-nonsense heroine who never compromises on her dignity. Through persistence, Nora learns the use of magic, a talent that will eventually be useful during the inevitable showdown between Aruendiel and the Faitoren.
Barker's lovingly developed main characters are the engine of the novel, and their prickly relationship comprises its center. By the end, readers will feel at home in the alternate universe Barker has created, and her protagonists will come to seem like old friends. --Ilana Teitelbaum, book reviewer at the Huffington Post