Book Review: Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman

Goodreads Summary: The Owens sisters confront the challenges of life and love in this bewitching novel from New York Times bestselling author Alice Hoffman.
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...

Goodreads Rating: 3.78 stars with over 69,000 ratings

Genre listing: Fantasy, Fiction, Magic, Witches

Goodreads Challenge: 32/60 

2020 Reading Challenge: #2 A book you got for under $3 (See the full challenge https://linzthebookworm.blogspot.com/2019/12/2020-reading-challenge.html)

Book Review:

*Edit: Apparently, my Grammarly updates aren't taking effect when I make them. Please excuse my dust while I go through and edit hundreds of posts in between work and classes.*

Happy August, Readers! I am so excited that it is August because that means it's that much closer to being fall, my favorite season. I am ready for the leaves to turn, and it to get chilly.  

At some point and time this week, I had to read Managing to Learn by John Shook. It was required for a training class I was in at work, so I decided if I was going to read, it should count for something. It bumped me up to 31 books for the year, and I'm using it as #49 Read a motivational/inspirational book, which I probably wasn't going to read anything for anyways. 

On to Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman. I did not know this was actually a book until Amazon decided to tell me it was on sale for under $3. I knew there was a movie called Practical Magic, but I've never actually watched it. I figured I'd go ahead and snag it at the time, because why not. I had other books that were slated for this category, but I rarely stick to plan anyways. 

When talking about this book, I described it as having a "creepy, whimsical vibe." Now that it's finished, I feel like that's still true, but it kind of faded as the book went on. The creepy, whimsical feeling was more surrounding The Aunts. Given the title, I mistakenly assumed that magic would be a lot more present than what it is in the book. It's there, but it felt very subtle and was never really named. People would call the Owens women witches as insults, but there was never any moment where I felt like they outright acknowledged it. It came across as like the aunts were doing concoctions, odd happenings, or senses and feelings. The exception being the acknowledgment of Jimmy's ghost. Everything else felt incredibly undefined. 

The central portion of the story was just about the women and their love interests, including the women who came to visit their aunts. Inline with that was just a story about sisterly bonds. It was interesting, and I liked it, but not what I was really expecting. All of the relationships seemed to be this instantaneous love at first sight type of thing as well. Love at first sight relationships just makes me roll my eyes. 

The only characters I really found myself wanting to know more about were the aunts. Sally seemed kind of annoying, and Gillian and Antonia might as well have been the same person. Kylie was okay, and there could have been a lot of room to expand on the emotions and spirits she was sensing.  The whole time reading it, I kept wondering if Sally, Gillian, and Antonia had some kind of magic, but it was so subtly written that it was hard to tell. I think I expected a lot more Charmed type of story where they find out their witches or always knew and learned to use their powers.

In the end, I think I just wanted more details, especially more world-building. The ending was kind of abrupt as well. I don't even really remember what the conclusion is. I expected to have like another 30-40 pages of story, and then it was just done. So, that part of it was somewhat disappointing.  Overall, I enjoyed the story, but I wanted more magic and less romance.