A beautifully written addition to the Practical Magic series. It has the perfect mixture of historical fiction and magic realism. I am looking forward to the next installment! ( )

Fantastically Magical!!! ( )

Suspending progress... While I am THRILLED to have snagged an advance copy (thank you, Tonie!), it was veering a little too close to disturbingly dark for me, at this time. Can't wait to come back to it when I am a little more resilient with such tones.

I'm losing the will to live: another three star bloater. Practical Magic is one of my favourite films, but the books are romance novels with literary pretensions. The author rhapsodises on the meaning of love so often that she sounds like the Love Is ... cartoons by Kim Casali from the 1960s. Why have a prequel about a strong woman like Maria Owens, the female ancestor who escapes hanging when the rope breaks, and make her a blithering idiot who falls for the first charmer she meets? Why make her story about men at all? Maria is the daughter of a witch who is raised by another woman also skilled in the 'Nameless Art', and her daughter Faith is even more powerful, yet half of the overblown and repetitive story is wasted on wall art philosophy like 'love someone who will love you back'. The author's only saving grace is her historical research and wry take on the hypocritical 'Puritans' of New England and the men - of course - who labelled as witches and then murdered women for not following the rules. So much for the New World! ( )

Going into this my only experience with Alice Hoffman or the Owens family was the movie Practical Magic, and getting through this was difficult at times because it has a very different tone. This is very much a novel of historical fiction, and there are a lot of difficult situations (based on historical truths) that need to be grappled with. It wasn’t really “fun” to read, for the most part, but I’m glad I stuck with it. Also, it really made me want to get a pair of red boots. ( )