I’ve read most of Alice Hoffman’s novels over the past 20 years and she continues to impress with her powerful ability to turn a phrase in thoughtful ways in her novel, Magic Lessons. She finds a way to seed moral philosophies & musings within journeys of the ethereal and it’s feels like “when the beat drops” every time.
The brand of magical realism that Hoffman has helped define takes a darker tone in this book that I found quite fitting for the 17th century historical context. One notable characteristic of this story was the many small detailed interjections of herbology and historical witchcraft practices as if the story was scribbled in the margins of an ancient grimoire bound in black toad skin to merge as one book.
I was thoroughly intrigued with the character arc of the daughter, Faith, and wanted more, but found the other characters including the main character Maria to be less so. The story moves with Maria from England to the Caribbean to Massachusetts to New York City, but a sense of place never really pulled me in as well as her other books set in New England. And unfortunately the shifting POV didn’t always transition smoothly.
Regardless I enjoyed this origin story of Practical Magic and found numerous moments in my reading experience that will make me want to revisit this novel again and again.

Alice Hoffman is one of those authors who I'm never not impressed with. In Magic Lessons, she brings us to the past of the Owens' women and she weaves this tale in her inimitable way. Her writing is lyrical and truly wondrous; her words are so rich that occasionally I could only read a few pages at a time before I had to close my kindle. Her words sink deep and stay with you.

This book was. absolutely, without a doubt, one of the best contemporary books I've ever read and I don't recall saying that about a title in years. I cannot recommend this one enough. You won't be disappointed with this book.


My sincere thanks to Alice Hoffman, Simon & Schuster, and NetGalley.

This book....Oh this book. It was just incredibly delightful (OK, it dragged a little at a couple points, but overall, it was just a really good book). I love anything to do with magic, and this is full of recipes and witchcraft, plus the Salem Witch trials - I mean, these are my JAMS. I loved the information on the witch's grimoires and journals and the rules associated with them because a book of spells and recipes and drawings sounds AMAZING.

Every time you think you know what's going to happen, and you're feeling really superior and slightly bored, like "Oh this is SO predictable," the book shifts and you just feel dumb but also super happy because it's exciting and unexpected.

Did I want to slap Maria at times? OMG YES. Did I want to slap Faith at times? OMG YES. This was an ARC (shoutout to Netgalley) and I actually hope they edit out some of the repetitive parts of the women being dumb because it does distract from their awesomeness at points. It's like they are 90% awesome and 10% not awesome, but in the book, they're shown to be like 70% awesome, 30% not awesome.

I highly recommend this book.

My favorite Alice Hoffman book yet! The history of the Owens family made for a fascinating read. I was drawn in from the very beginning. Knowing the history of the family makes the other books in the series that much stronger.

This book is so addicting!! I was hooked right away at the beginning. This is written as a prequel to practical magic. Where the curse begins at the start. This starts off in England during their own period of witch trials. Where Maria Owens is being raised by a foster mother Hannah Owens who is a wise women. Although technically in history a women can be accused of a witch for looking the wrong way being to smart etc.
Maria Owens goes to many different places all the while in the background her foster mothers words are Hide who you really are. ( nameless art person) She ends up meetings some very notorious people throughout history all the while very cruel too. While at the same time someone is trying to win her heart over. Roadblocks get in the way of her travels. Highly recommend Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman its amazing!!

" You make love what you want it to be, Hannah had told her. You decide. You walk towards it, or you walk away." ( quote from the book) On love

This ARC was given to me by netgalley in exchange for an honest review :)

Having read Practical Magic and Rules of Magic, I was so excited to get a chance to read the advanced copy of Magic Lessons. I anticipated that this was going to be a great book and it did not disappoint me. This book tells the story of Maria Owens who created the centuries-old curse that affected the Owens women when it came to matters of the heart. I love how the book easily flowed throughout the important events of Maria’s life and the circumstances in which she created the curse. There were no dull parts in this book and I was fully engrossed in the story from beginning to end. That says a lot since I easily lose focus at times while reading even the best books. This story will cast its spell on the reader with its rich details of magic and love.

Alice Hoffman gets better and better with every book. I didn't think I could love one of her books more than Practical Magic, but then The Rules of Magic was magnificent. And then here comes Magic Lessons... I was apprehensive about reading this because I anticipated it ending tragically with the death and curse discussed in both previous books, but Hoffman spins a beautiful tale that is equal parts sad, beautiful and perfectly suited to her characters--much like many of her previous books. This reminded me of Faithful, with the same message of personal growth and the power of love and connection, while also taking elements of The Marriage of Opposites. If you loved The Witch of Blackbird Pond as a child or want magical realism with strong female characters, this is a book to add to your To Read lists.

Anyone who has read Practical Magic is familiar with the family legends about Maria Owens, the ancestor who began both the Owens line and the tradition of being unlucky in love. In "Magic Lessons" we are finally given Maria's story, from her childhood in England all the way through to her establishment in the New England colonies. We learn about the misguided love affair that begat the Owens curse, and about the early life of Maria's daughter Faith. Of course we know that Maria is going to have tragedy in her life, but in true Alice Hoffman fashion there is also hope.

As in any Alice Hoffman novel this book is full of lovely imagery and emotional moments. Occasionally the depth of imagery actually gets in the way of the story itself. There is a bit too much setting the scene and describing atmosphere and not quite enough dialogue and character interaction. I also had a tough time getting through the parts of the story that dealt with Faith's father, since we knew going in exactly how that was going to turn out. I did, however, very much enjoy the in between parts and the developing relationship between Maria and her daughter. The final third of the book was the best part, where Hoffman explores the consequences of the actions taken by the various characters.

"Magic Lessons" is another lovely installment in the history of the Owens women, and I wouldn't mind seeing more of this family in the future.

(as an aside, I was delighted by the information about the Jewish pirates of Jamaica. I had never heard this bit of Jewish history and had to go look it up to find out what the real story was. Very cool historical details.)

A fascinating story about Maria Owens and her daughter Faith. Maria finds her way to Salem, Massachusetts in the late 1600’s searching for the father of her child. Alice Hoffman weaves a great tale of love and the hardships women went through in the 17th century.

Another simply wonderful novel by Alice Hoffman. The novel starts when Hannah, a practitioner of the Nameless Arts, finds a baby lying in the snow with a crow watching over her. Hannah rears Maria, who is clearly gifted herself until a tragedy befalls her. Maria sets out to find her true family and the meaning of love. Eventually she travels to the New World and gives birth to a talented daughter of her own. But when she ventures to find her child's father, the townspeople turn on her, nearly ending her life. In the midst of her strife, her child is taken from her, causing grief no mother should endure. Beautifully written, with characters the reader will long remember, MAGIC LESSONS is about finding one's own destiny and how we create our own family. Just excellent.

Anyone who is familiar with Alice Hoffman will know her previous work Practical Magic. This book is the prequel, but it is not required to have read the previous book or have even viewed the movie to enjoy this work.
This story follows Maria Owens, a young woman who is born out of wedlock in England and is found by a healer. It progresses and she eventually finds herself in the new world in the mid 17th century.
The descriptions of all the different scenes are so beautiful and warm, as is Hoffman's style.
This book is heartbreaking, beautiful, and touching all at the same time. I cannot say enough good things about this amazing book.
I found myself wishing it were longer, because Hoffman's prose is so stunning and transporting that I didn't want it to end.
If there were a way to give it more stars I would. It is as though she has lived every lifetime of her characters and is able to describe them intricately. If I could reread this book again for the first time, I definitely would. It has been a long time since I read practical magic and now I intend to read it shortly because this made me fall in love with the storyline all over again. I hope everyone takes the opportunity and reads it ASAP.

I freely admit that I have never read either Practical Magic or The Rules of Magic. But, I have loved most of Alice Hoffman’s books, and came into this with an open mind - no preconceptions based on the previous books in the series. I don’t think it matters that I haven’t read the other books, as this is a story that stands on its own. Maria is a wise woman, a healer, strong-willed, determined, a mother, a kind soul, and a witch, at a time when being called a witch most often led to execution of one form or another. Maria has a daughter. When Maria is jailed on suspicion of witchcraft, Faith is very young, and she is taken in by a neighbor who desperately wants a child. Magic Lessons in the story of Maria and Faith, and their journey back to each other, and into their own power and self-knowledge. Hoffman captures each character beautifully, and her writing is rich and evocative, but gets bogged down in places with the over-use of lists of herbs ands and plants and their healing properties. These lists felt like filler, and took me out of the momentum of the story. I wanted more feeling and less fluff. I did not love this book, and it probably won’t compel me to read the first two in the series

Wonderful,mystical prequel to Practical Magic. Hoffman deftly weaves history, mysticism, and fiction into an enchanting narrative.
I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is a fantastic prequel to Practical Magic and Rules of Magic. Alice Hoffman is a go to buy for me and this is exactly why. She gets better with every book she writes! I ant recommend her enough!

I received this ARC from Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for my honest review

5 Stars-in-My-Eyes

It is in the January of 1664 when Hannah Owens found an infant in a field, a foot of snow around her, the infant staring at a crows perched on her basket atop the junipers, the crow staring at this infant girl with pitch black hair and pale silvery-gray eyes, wrapped in a blanket with her name stitched along the border. And so Hannah brought the infant girl named Maria home to raise as her own, with the bird following, and Hannah singing.

The crow stayed on, and was named Caden. Caden, of course, knew he was supposed to be there, as he had recognized his destiny to be Maria’s familiar.

It’s there in the middle of these woods and fields where Maria learns about the nature around her, the difference between the things that grew there that could heal, and the things that could cause harm, with Hannah as her tutor as well as her mother.

In 1665, when Maria was two years old, deaths from the plague in London took the lives of sixty-eight thousand, followed by the fire in London the following year, which took seventy thousand homes. Hannah’s gifts were sought after by more and more women, women who came to her searching for answers, seeking her out the cures that came from her garden, cures for the ache of those looking for love. And while Hannah crafts her cures, Maria looks on and gains knowledge of the art of magic.

This story mainly follows the life of Maria, a story that begins as an infant and follows her life as she learns cures and remedies and charms from Hannah. And when Maria is ten, on Midsummer’s night, Hannah’s present to her is own Grimoire, a book made with love, and filled with power and knowledge. The lessons begin in earnest; there is much for Maria to learn.

Maria will eventually travel to Curaçao, where she lives for a while, until she travels to Boston some years later in search of a man she met in Curaçao, and the story goes on from there. Of course, included are the Salem Witch trials. Of course, there’s more, much more, to this story which I believe is her best of the Practical Magic series, perhaps because the writing seems a bit more elevated in tone than I remember from Practical Magic. A bit more like the writing I found in The Dovekeepers, although with more of the lightheartedness that is occasionally found in both of the sequels to this second prequel to the book that started it all.

If you’ve read either Practical Magic or Rules of Magic then you already know about the Owens family, and the ‘curse’ that has haunted the women in this family for centuries. If you haven’t read either of those books, Magic Lessons is where the story of the curse of the Owens women begins, so it isn’t necessary to have read them – but you’ll want to once you’ve finished reading this!


Pub Date: 06 Oct 2020

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Simon & Schuster

It seems that this is one of a series; yet, I read it and enjoyed it as a stand-alone. References were made within the story that had me researching a bit for myself. Reading a good story with the possibility of learning new things is something I enjoy. Thank you Netgalley, Simon & Schuster and Alice Hoffman for the ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Great book in the Owens family series of books. The characters have been written with care. I’m not great at reviewing books in “writing form” so this is a woeful expression about how much I loved this book. Quick summary: I loved it, will be recommending it, and I give it 5 stars.

I've never read Alice Hoffman before, although I was familiar with her name and a few of her better known books. I was really missing out! This is a fascinating story on several levels. It's wonderful historical fiction, obviously well researched and filled with historically accurate (I think) characters who are fully realized and engaging. It's a family story about secrets and loss and longing. It's a romance about love gone wrong, unrequited love, and soulmates finally finding their way.

This is a prequel to Hoffman's Practical Magic books, but knowledge of these books is not necessary. Since I have not read them, I can't make a comparison. This is a standalone book. I can say that I am now intrigued enough to seek them out and read the rest of the story. Hoffman's writing is beautiful and brings the reader into this world of history and magic. Definitely recommended.

Alice Hoffman is a goddess of the written word. A consistently good writer, fabulous characterization, enchanting settings, and well-paced storytelling. Magic Lessons delivers and more in the Practical Magic universe? Sign me up!

Trigger warning: violence to a cat within the first few pages. I’ve stopped reading books for far less but because it’s Alice Hoffman, I continued.

I've enjoyed each of these books more than the one before it. I would like to think the work gets better as the author gets to know the Owens women more.