The Stone Doorway is an excellent piece of Young Adult Fantasy that addresses issues such as self-confidence and bullying as a young woman is whisked through a portal into the Vale.
On the day that Tori McKenna's life became surprisingly unordinary, she had observed how painfully normal she had let her existence become. A thought she would later regret. It started off in its normal, simple fashion; eating breakfast in the kitchen alone while panicked about the day ahead. She walked to school alone, threatened by the very glance of other classmates. School dragged by in its ordinary fashion with Tori silently existing in the back rows of classrooms and making herself as small as possible in the hallways, bleeding right into track practice. This, for Tori, was the best part of her day. The slap of her sneakers against the surface of the track, the wind blowing her chestnut hair and the warm sun beating down on her bare shoulders melted away the stress and panic of the day and made her feel more alive than she had in 2 years. The sensation always died away too quickly afterward, but she came back every day to get a taste of what "living" felt like.
