Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman

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Practical Magic #1

My rating: 4/5 Stars

Primary Genre: Fantasy/Magical realism

Blurb: 

The Owens sisters confront the challenges of life and love in this bewitching novel from New York Times bestselling author Alice Hoffman. For more than two hundred years, the Owens women have been blamed for everything that has gone wrong in their Massachusetts town. Gillian and Sally have endured that fate as well: as children, the sisters were forever outsiders, taunted, talked about, pointed at. Their elderly aunts almost seemed to encourage the whispers of witchery, with their musty house and their exotic concoctions and their crowd of black cats. But all Gillian and Sally wanted was to escape. One will do so by marrying, the other by running away. But the bonds they share will bring them back—almost as if by magic...

My Thoughts:

I'm down to one book left in this series, so I've been very excited to start it. If you've been reading along with me, you know that I decided to read this series in timeline order rather than the order they were released. I liked this book but if you're reading it looking for the movie, go elsewhere. The movie strays quite a bit from the novel. I think the nice thing about having seen the movie is that you don't have to imagine in your head what the characters look like, do you know what I mean? For some reason when I can't visualize my character, I feel off. No quarrel with that here, obviously. It happened to me when I read the Haunting Adeline/Hunting Adeline duo though. I finally had to go on Tik Tok and look up what other people thought that they looked like because I couldn't concentrate on the book without having that visual in my head 😆 So that was a plus for me, personally. On to the book itself. This was another great read from Alice Hoffman. The vibe of this book seemed more dark/gloomy than the other two. It definitely had less comedic moments and a more serious tone. The romance storylines felt sort of rushed to me, like they crammed them in at the last minute. Squeezed them into the final chapter so they'd be there, if you will. The ending felt sort of "squished" and left some questions unanswered. I did like that this story went deeper into the lives of Antonia and Kylie, made them more of a main character than the movie. Having seen the movie first, I was surprised that Sally moved away and hadn't stayed with the aunts like she does in the movie and I really missed that vibe of them all being in the house together. The beloved quirkiness of the aunts that's in the movie is also missing from the book. As much as I loved Sally in the movie, I didn't really like her character in the book. Gillian also felt sort of "meh" to me. My favorite character in this book was Kylie. This book takes a deep dive into Sally's psyche, which is understandably dark after the loss of her husband. Personally, I felt that I had a tough time connecting to her character. All in all, I definitely liked this book. I just liked Magic Lessons better. I need the recipe for that black soap!

Final thought: This book is obviously a must read for anyone who likes witchy books or is in the mood for a fall season read so if that sounds like you, forge ahead! If you saw the movie without reading the book first and you really love it (like me), you may not LOVE this read.

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