Practical Magic

Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman

I keep saying my reading pace is eventually going to slow down this month…buutttttt so far, THAT ain’t happening! 🤣

Two reasons why:

#1 Sleeping problems strike again, so I’m getting all kinds of pages in at very odd hours. I desperately need to figure out what the deal is and get some damn rest (none of my regular things are working…ugh), but I am grateful for the company of stories during the times my brain gets in those weird anxiety spirals and prevents me from sleeping. Books are a wonderful coping tool, I must say.

#2 My “sweet spot” pace of listening to audiobooks is officially 1.8x speed. I know some of yall probably think that is RIDICULOUS and it most likely is LOL… and I have no idea the reason why I prefer to listen to things at such a fast pace….but it’s how I like to listen and it is how it will stay. 🤷‍♀️ I listen on my ear buds at multiple pockets in my day while doing chores/errands or when I’m in my car by myself, so it doesn’t take long to get thru a chapter.

So I’ve already made it to the 3rd book chronologically in this series…the first one written out of them all….”Practical Magic”.

There has been so much build up in my brain about this one since I’ve heard so many things about it over the years (and heard so many gush about the movie from the late 90s too) that I had high expectations going in.

I’ve enjoyed the other two books learning the Owens family legacy and I was looking forward to hearing the continuation in the next generation.

*Sigh*

This one did NOT come thru for me, yall.

Expectations were NOT MET.

😑

Here is the official summary:

“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…”

(Yeah, that is the whole summary….short and to the point with this one.)

This book is the story of Gillian and Sally, and also Sally’s daughters.

And it is COMPLETELY different from the other two stories in my opinion.

The magical vibe is definitely more focused on the aunts and how their magic affected Sally and Gillian, not about the two of THEM having or using magic.

In fact, I kept wondering “Do Gillian and Sally even HAVE powers? Did it skip a generation or something? “

Eventually, it is alluded to that one of Sally’s daughters has some kind of powers within, but it isn’t really discussed much.

That dang familial curse about falling in love is STILL THERE though….GAAAAHHHHHHH…drives me CRAZY! I mean, what good is having magic if you CAN’T BREAK A DAMN CURSE, amiright?!?!?

Are these witches really even that GOOD at magic???

This story is about family and the ties that bind…especially when it comes to sisterhood and motherhood. This is a common thread in all the books so far—tying all these stories together is the concept of love.

Just like in the other two, this story goes into all the different meanings and layers of love…the pains and struggles people put themselves thru to obtain it or retain it or protect it…whether it is true love or just what is THOUGHT to be love.

This book was just not magical enough for me and I just didn’t feel much connection to the characters…this story was just SO DIFFERENT from the others. But I think that each book is supposed to be it’s own kinda thing, so it absolutely fulfilled that purpose. 😬

I did enjoy this audiobook narrator more than the past two. This narrator has a more unique and more “fitting” voice for the characters, so that was a highlight of this book for me.

I feel like as these books have progressed chronologically, my enjoyment has lessened a bit with each one.

I still would say I enjoy this series as a collective, but as individual books go, my enjoyment was at the highest for the first, then waned a bit with the second, and now here we are at the third (and original) and I’m just like “That was just meh for me.”

There is one more book to go to finish out the Owens family story–“The Book of Magic”–and I am going to go ahead and see how it all concludes. Maybe things will perk back up for me at the finale??? Here’s hoping 🤷‍♀️

Yall know I’m gonna be back in a few days with my final opinions on it all….let’s see how it all wraps up…