Need help with title & author! *spoilers*

[Risa_FantasyFan]

I cannot for the life of me remember the name of this book nor the author. I loved the book and it really stuck in my memory as an excellent book. I ended it and instantly wished there was more but I cannot remember the name of the book nor the author.


This is a book about two girl friends who are pre-teen or teenagers. One of them lives in a magical house that changes it’s rooms and hallways. The two girls go exploring in the house and they find a room with a music box that opens a portal to another world. It is a fantasy realm where there is a bridge that goes from one world to the other. They enter and find all kinds of magical creatures. There is a town full of circus type people and they are all getting ready for a huge parade. Everyone is dressing up in fancy dresses. The girls are warned that they must make it back to the portal at a certain time to return to their world. The girl from the magic house has a magic pin that comes to life as a little fairy type creature who is snarky and gives them each little bits of info about the world they are in. The girls go to a store to try dresses on and have to hide from some evil queen or something who is out to get them. They run and cause a huge commotion at the store. The evil queen rides a magical creature like a dragon or something along those lines (a magical chariot maybe?) and eventually finds them. They fight her and win. Lots of other exciting things happen to them but these are the key ones I could most remember. They return to the house at the precise moment they left and it’s as if they never left. The girl’s aunt or grandma or some other relative who is her guardian tells her that she has been marked since birth as having some special place within this magical world but she has been hiding her from it all to keep her safe.

Can anyone please help? Thank you!
Marisa