The Book of Magic - Book Review

 

The Book of Magic (Practical Magic #2) by Alice Hoffman
Publication date: October 12, 2021
Pages: 400 pages
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars ☆☆☆☆☆
Strengths: Amazing characters, detailed story, great magic and witchcraft depictions
Weaknesses: Some loose ends? (maybe another book coming??)

There are some books I know I'll give five stars to before I even start. These include all of the books in Alice Hoffman's Practical Magic series. 

The most press these books have gotten, and the way I've mentioned them to most people, are the book that the Practical Magic movie was based on, and then more of the glorious, magical back story. Which of course is now followed by the what happens next for Aunt Jet and Aunt Franny, and Gillian and Sally. 

This book (book 2, because Practical Magic was book 1, and The Rules of Magic and Magic Lessons actually took place before Practical Magic), tells of Aunt Jet and Aunt Franny leaving their magical legacy to Gillian and Sally (although Sally really doesn't want it), and also to Sally's daughters (who don't know about their magical history). The biggest conflict of The Book of Magic is the curse - is it real even if you don't believe it? And if some don't believe it exists, can it still be eliminated? The Owens women deserve to give and receive love, but no solution has been found in hundreds of years.

I don't want to spoil the details for those who haven't yet read the series. Of course, I can't recommend the series strongly enough. It doesn't quite need to be read in order (it wasn't written that way), but I can't imagine reading just part of the series. I read Practical Magic first, then the two prequels, and last week I finished The Book of Magic. I don't know if there are more coming or not. There are reasons to continue, and reasons to say the story is now complete. We'll just have to leave that up to Alice Hoffman.

Thank you again, Ms. Hoffman, for another great and engaging book. Definitely 5 out of 5 stars again from me. While I don't have time to read them all again yet, I'm looking forward to watching the Practical Magic movie again and see how the newest installment influences my views of the characters, by knowing what comes next.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for my advance electronic copy of this great book. Receiving my copy of the book for free did not influence my review.