When I was a child, I enjoyed everything witchcraft and witches in a fun sorta Bewitched kinda way. Samantha Stevens is by far my favorite fantastical witch.

However, in my adult years I can never seem to grasp anything fantasy or science fiction that requires the use my rather dormant imagination.

I’ve been wanting to read this series and when I saw this offered on Netgalley, I thought well this would be the perfect place to start with a prequel of a series I am interested in.

I learned something about myself today which is I still cannot wrap my head around fantasy type books no matter how hard I try. I gave up and did not finish which makes me sad, but also I couldn’t endure much more.

The writing is quite good, but I simply could not connect to anything in this book which is of no fault of the author but rather my own lack of imagination. I am quite sure Alice Hoffman fans and readers of this series will find it quite good.

Thank you Netgalley for an ARC in exchange of my honest opinion. In the future, I will stick to trusted genres.

Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman is the prequel to her book Practical Magic that was made into a movie. Magic Lessons takes place during the witch trials during the 1600's in Salem, Mass. It tells the story of Hannah, Maria, and Faith Owens who are ancestors to the Owens sisters that you know from Practical Magic.

I wanted to love this book but it was just okay for me, and I can't really put my finger on the problem. The story was good, but seemed slow at times. There was a lot of descriptive paragraphs that set the scene, but maybe went a little long. I do think that if you read and enjoyed Practical Magic that you must read Magic Lessons.

Thank you to #NetGalley for allowing me to review and give my honest opinion of #MagicLessons.

Alice Hoffman is an author I recommend all the time, and I have enjoyed her past stories about the Owens women of Magnolia Lane. In Magic Lessons, Hoffman takes us back to the beginning of the Owens curse and fleshes out the life of Maria Owens, who started the whole thing.

Hoffman skillfully blends historical elements with lush and lyrical writing, telling stories of the women of the time and how their actions shaped the future of their descendants. All the emotions are here: love, loss, heartbreak, jealousy, betrayal, rage, compassion, tenderness - which all come together in a whirlwind of a story that starts in Essex England and ends in Essex Massachusetts.

Fans of Practical Magic will thoroughly enjoy this prequel; Hoffman fans in general will enjoy.

Magic Lessons gave me the same fairy tale feeling that I got from reading Practical Magic, but with a completely historical setting this time. I appreciated the feminist themes and the ways the women protected each other. It was interesting to get the back story to Practical Magic in this prequel, and have a better understanding of how family history affected their contemporary lives.

Alice Hoffman weaves her magic again and delivers the spellbinding prequel to Practical Magic and the history of the mysterious Owens women.

this started out a bit slow for me. i did like it in the end, but it just took a bit to get there. i do think you'll get more out of this book if you read and enjoyed the other two, even though it's a prequel.

For you fans of Practical Magic here is the backstory. This is the origin story of that curse on men who love Owens women. It is a very enjoyable read taking us from England to Barbados to New England. There is good magic and bad, a search for a child and a battle between good and evil. Yes, Alice Hoffman is giving us all the things in the story, including a very satisfying ending.

It started off slowly, much too slow, for my taste. The subject of magic was interesting and the suggested remedies were interesting to rrad.
Maria, brought up in the woods by a witch, learns first hand how these remedies work. As she grows older she will be quite powerful in helping others, especially in love, but love is something her magic won't help her find. What is real love is something she does not seem to find.
It was slow, then ok, then dragged enough that I skimmed until I finally felt it wasn't worth finishing.
Thank you NetGalley for an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest opinion

I read half of this book and just couldn’t bring myself to finish it. 😞 Unfortunately, my main takeaway from this book is that it is *so* narrow in its perspective—to the point where it feels like this book was not only just not written for everyone to read and enjoy, but that it was written *only* for people who exist in a non-intersectional white cis judeochristian heteronormative perspective.

I was never able to get into the story and I didn’t relate to any of the characters at all, nor did I ever really understand the motives behind their choices or feelings. And I think there’s a difference between writing a book *for* a certain perspective/identity/life-experience and doing so while still acknowledging a diversity of existences and experiences and reflecting more of an intersectional understanding of humanity that I felt like this book just didn’t accomplish.

I think in the end it was the primary theme of “blood makes a family”—the idea that unconditional love between people who are genetically related is both a norm and a value—as well as the misunderstanding of the role of nature in witchcraft (and especially the role of animals in witchcraft), in addition to the extreme cis-heteronormativity of the views and values expressed by the third person omniscient narrator, as well as the characters, that kept me from enjoying this book.

On top of that, however, was the lack of depth both in the book’s depiction of the historical time period in which it was set and the literary execution.

In particular the MC’s experiences onboard the various ships she traveled on was extremely unrealistic and the sugarcoating of the depiction of slavery in Curaçao as well as the erasure of the Indigenous experience in North America were rather upsetting. Especially coming somewhat fresh from reading The Devil and the Dark Water—which depicted life aboard a ship so vividly—and Washington Black—which demonstrated the pure evil of the reality of slavery (without turning into “trauma porn”, which I am not suggesting Hoffman should have done at all! just to be clear)—this book failed to keep up its promise of the “historical” part of historical fiction to the point where I felt that the lack of depth in this area very much detracted from the substance of the overall story.

In terms of the book’s literary execution (which I acknowledge is a point of personal preference) I felt that the story was told using too much narration and not enough of the action was played out for the reader to see. Characters’ feelings and perspectives were communicated by the third.per.om. narrator and not via the characters’ actions and dialogue. This style of writing almost always keeps me from being able to truly get to know the characters in a story and makes relating to them nearly impossible.

This book reminded me a lot of A Secret History of Witches which also fell flat for me for almost all of the exact same reasons. If you are looking for a book that is more of a romance novel than a historical fiction novel (and are ok with one that sort of trivializes the nature of witchcraft), your belief systems align with a judeochristian perspective, and you identify as a white cis hetero female, it is possible that you may enjoy this book more than I was able to, but unfortunately I walked away with the profound feeling that this book was just not meant for readers with a diversity of perspectives and experiences.

TW // lots of animals are murdered, a lot of binary-normative language (i.e. the phrase “men and women” is used a lit when the author means “people”, etc), strong anti-adoption*/blood-makes-a-family/a-“mother’s-love”-is-always-a-given sentiments, violence against women, domestic violence, slavery, torture, murder

*I know the relationship between Hannah and Maria was supposed to support the value of adoption, but the fact that Maria did not consider Hannah to be her “real” mother read a lot more like a disavowal of the validity of adoption to me.

I give this Five stars on Goodreads! Wow, what a saga to follow Maria’s story across seas and time and to make connections across her character and Faith’s. I enjoyed imagining Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Salem as they were depicted in the story. There is So much attention to detail woven throughout the book.

Loved it Alice Hoffman! This book, the prequel to Practical Magic and The Rules of Magic, beautifully takes us to the source of the curse in the Owens family. This is the story of Maria Owens who was abandoned in a snowy field in rural England in the 1600s. She was taken in and raised by Hannah Owens, who taught Maria everything she could about herbs and healing and incantations. One important lesson Hannah taught was to always love someone who will love you back.

The story starts in Essex, England and moves to Curaçao then to Salem, Massachusetts, and to New York City - Hannah traveled a great deal. Her life was filled with hardship and much of her story is very dark and sad. She is very mistrustful of love and is betrayed at several different ages by various people. The 1600s was very dangerous for women, especially if they were truly witches. It was important to keep their gifts a secret.

The book is masterfully written and gave me the feel of being in that time and how difficult it was for women. The characters were fleshed out well so I felt I understood them and what motivated their actions. I've enjoyed all the books in this series and loved the prequel - it explained so much!

Thanks to Alice Hoffman and Simon & Schuster through Netgalley for an advance copy.

Once again we return to the Owens family from Hoffman's previous books Practical Magic and The Rules of Magic. This time we learn about the woman who started the Owens line of witches. Maria Owens was left abandoned in the snowy woods and taken in by a kind woman who practiced witchcraft and taught young Maria the art. We follow Maria as she leaves England for Curacao, Salem, New York and back to Salem. We also get to see her daughter Faith, who winds up taking a different path than her mother. I like the Owens and will read anything written about them even though I think this outing was weaker than Practical Magic and The Rules of Magic, although it may have more to do with the fact that parts of the novel take place during the Salem witch trials and I absolutely loathe Puritans (I blame Hawthorne for that). However Maria and Faith are wonderful examples of strong women who strain against and obliterate the constraints of their times and the cast of side characters are each intriguing in their own way. Hopefully we see more stories about the Owens family of witches.

Fascinating story about the origins of the Owen's family and their matriarch. Set in the 1600’s at the height of "witch hysteria" A compelling tale of Maria Owen's being accused of witchcraft and the beginnings of the curse that will haunt generations of her family. Alice Hoffman delivers in this intriguing novel that you will not want to put down. Brilliant storytelling, highly recommend. A perfect read for fall. Thank you NetGalley for allowing me to review.

4.25 Stars

When Hannah Owens finds an abandoned baby in the snow, she brings her home and cares for her as her own. Hannah is a healer and teaches the child, Maria, about the “Unnamed Arts,” though it’s clear early on that Maria is a blood witch with special abilities of her own. Hannah’s first important lesson to Maria: “always love someone who will love you back.” Maria is abandoned by the first man she thinks she loves, setting the course for a life filled with hardships, and a curse that will follow generations to come.

I have not read Practical Magic (watched the movie a million times) or Rules of Magic, but knew I needed to read this prequel to those books. Magic Lessons is in essence a book about love. Being blessed and cursed by it, fighting and ignoring it. How love can destroy a life or make one richer. The extremes people will go for it. What and who you choose in love determines the life you’ll get. Love was the central driving force in all of the choices made by the characters in this book.

I loved the deep history of witches that filled the pages. Hoffman clearly did a lot of research. There are magical recipes and spells, such as Courage Tea- which is used often, and magical elements such as familiars and scrying mirrors. The book details the Salem Witch Trials as well as the anti-semitism in the 1600’s- the latter something I never knew about. Even though Hoffman’s narrative is more telling than showing, it still paints a vivid picture of the settings (England, Curaçao, Massachusetts, and New York City) and the characters.

Some portions of the story felt repetitive as the message is driven home, but with well developed characters and an engaging plot, I found this to be an easy and compelling read. I now plan to read the other two books.


*Thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest and voluntary review.

Having read ‘Practical Magic’ and ‘The Rules of the Magic’ I was so looking forward to reading ‘Magic Lessons’ which is a prequel to the others. It definitely did not disappoint. I have to admit it did not hook me in right away, but once it did I could not put it down. I felt as if I were right there watching Maria and John, and then Maria and Samuel. Loved Cadin and Keeper. The setting of the tale has intrigued me since I was a child, Salem in the 1600’s, and Hoffman captured the incredulous nature of the mind sets during this horrific time in history. Having visited Salem many times over the years and read several nonfiction books, I was impressed with the ease with which Hoffman incorporated the setting and horrors inherent of the times into her magical tale so flawlessly. So admired the strength of the women in the face of such adversity. Hopefully there will be many more tales following the Owens women. Many many thanks to Alice Hoffman, Simon and Schuster, and NetGalley for providing me with the opportunity to read this amazing arc soon to be published on October 6th. Hoffman’s many fans will not want to miss this magical tale and hopefully she will add many more new fans that will love her amazing books.

Another great installment in the Practical Magic series from Hoffman. We all already know that Hoffman is a great writer, and I'm enjoying the backward approach she is taking to her Owen's family story.

The setting for this installment is cozy, magical, and whimsical. Perfect for fall just around the corner. It's told more like a fairy tale rather than an intimate story and while sometimes it felt hard to relate to the characters, it did add some mysticism that felt right for the book. As in the other stories, there is great emphasis on female relationships and the consequences of magic.

One thing that I didn't really love compared to the other stories was that, Maria was fighting herself rather than magic like her ancestors. It was harder to get behind a heroine who made her own problems rather than actively fighting against curses that weren't their fault.

I enjoyed this book. Nice to learn more about the Owen's family. ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

Thank you Net Galley for the opportunity to read this ARC. THIS BOOK, Magic Lessons, will go down as one of my favorites of all time. It is unforgettable. It is intricately woven. I have never been a lover of Magic stories, but this one changed my mind. Beautiful!! I loved every word.

Excellent; I felt like I was reading a Grimm’s fairy tale through much of it because the atmosphere was otherworldly and surreal. There are some continuity problems with the stories but that could be attributed to details changing as stories are handed down over the generations.

4.5 Stars. This book - WOW. As always, Alice Hoffman just gets you right in the heart. The perfect amount of magic, love, family and the power of healing. I have read all the books in the Practical Magic series and the Owens' women, just hold a special place in my heart. It was truly an amazing experience to get to read about Maria, the matriarch of the family and how she came to be and love and grow her family. I loved how every character was formed and how you got to see through that, how the Owens family came to be. I loved every second. Thank you to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC.