Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC.
I was very excited to read this book as I had never read an Alice Hoffman book before. Honestly, I thought it was a prequel to the movie Practical Magic (which I have not watched but have heard rave reviews about). But, no sadly, after starting it I realized this a completely different Book series. I did not like the way it was written, the “prose” I suppose I’m supposed to say. I was bored. I would wait to do chores, change my baby’s diapers, just to stop reading. I regretted requesting this arc, Sorry but not sorry. I just don’t want to read about lists and love that doesn’t event seem sincere.

I have never been disappointed by an Alice Hoffman book and that track record still stands with Magic Lessons. She has once again brought the Practical Magic world back into my life in what might be my favorite installation in this series. If you have read the other books in this series or are just a Hoffman fan or just love witchy things this is the book for you.

Magic Lessons is a beautifully written story that pulls at your heart strings in the best way possible. In the early 1600s, Hannah Owens discovers baby Maria bundled up in the snow and takes her in. It quickly becomes apparent that Maria is gifted in the Nameless Art much like Hannah. As Maria grows, Hannah guides and teaches Maria to use her magical powers to best serve others. However, a series of tragedies strike and Maria finds herself ripped from her idyllic home and transported across the Atlantic Ocean to Curaçao and eventually to the dismal town of Salem, Massachusetts. Throughout her journey, Maria’s magical skills strengthen but she becomes embittered and resentful, believing love causes nothing but pain and heartache. Alice Hoffman has an incredible command of language that sweeps the reader along on an emotionally gripping and transformative journey. I connected deeply with the characters and found myself smiling, laughing, crying, and gasping as I made my way through the story. I’m convinced this book is pure magic because it left me completely entranced. Highly recommend!

I really wanted to like this book. Like really really. I loved some of the earlier books in this series and couldn't wait for this one. And then it was such a slow, slow slog. I found it tedious at points...I mean, how often do I want to read a list of herb/flowers and their remedies? I'll tell you, the answer is now zero. I had read and enjoyed the most recent predecessor in the series, The Rules of Magic, but had not loved it the way I had loved Practical Magic and some of Hoffman's other early works. Perhaps we have grown apart. Thanks for the ARC.

This evening I finished #MagicLessons, the upcoming novel from @ahoffmanwriter (due out this October) and it's my favorite read of 2020 so far! This book is magnificent. It's also now my favorite of the series! 💫

Magic Lessons is altogether transportive, eye-opening, wonderful, and utterly heartbreaking. I didn't want the book to end and I prolonged finishing it as long as I could 💫

I can't recommend Magic Lessons enough, especially if you've already read #PracticalMagic &
#TheRulesMagic. My love for this series began with Practical Magic, and I'm reading the series as the books are published because,
for me, my desire to know more & more about the Owens Women wouldn't be the same without PM as the foundation. And I love connecting the dots back to PM as I journey back in time throughout their family history! (This is just one humble readers opinion, you can read them in whatever order you wish). 💫

All the stars and #allthefeels 💛 This book hangover is going to take while to clear! (And it'll take time for a full review so stay tuned!) Officially 5⭐️

Thank you again to @simonandschuster @simonbooks and @netgalley for this e-galley of Magic Lessons*

The alchemy between a writer and a reader is a mystery that has never and will never be elucidated. It is beyond fathoming why a decent story told with all the right words in the right places will still sometimes leave me cold, with the impression that the author's heart simply isn't in the game. Such a book is Magic Lessons.

Perhaps it is time for Hoffman to move on from the Magic series of books and take on something new. She just seems tired to me, as if she can write this in her sleep, which is no very good reason to do so. There are other authors I have felt this about, who had a great deal of passion early on but lost the fire and kept writing anyway (Anne Lamott comes immediately to mind).

Maria Owens, our heroine, is a practitioner of the Unnamed Arts, a healer, and by some estimations a witch. She can certainly do magical things, and knows many herbal remedies for other ailments. What she traffics in mostly are love and the results of love gone astray, though she finds this trade largely distasteful. That is, until she finds a love of her own, which leads her to a greater love still.

All of this really is fine, and this story line, taking in as it does a sweep of many decades, should be very gratifying, but in this case just isn't. As I said in the first paragraph, I can't quite put my finger on why this is, but it is nonetheless so. Hoffman is a deeply talented writer who I would love to read again in another form, and hope that I will have the opportunity to do so in the near future.

A magical view into the past of one of the best novels written. Being Abel to take a look at the back story, back to the beginning, is a privilege when reading this book. The beautifully written words and the way the author weaves them if nothing if not perfection.

Magic Lessons exceeded my expectations. I'd say it's about par with Practical Magic in terms of characters, investment in the story, plot. Everyone likes a magical, mysterious main character with a familiar!

I was a little frustrated at how the Owens women really didn't think things through. I mean, just insert a small "pretend" into the curse so that only those pretending to love an Owens women would fall victim to it! Especially since she had reason to believe in love... I'm not sure I totally bought that scene.

But aside from that, it was a quick and enjoyable book. Thanks to Netgalley for providing a copy of this in exchange for an unbiased review.

Storytelling at it's best, as expected from Alice! A follow-up to Practical Magic and the Rules of Magic, this story goes back to the beginning of the Owens family, when Hannah Owens finds Maria, a wee baby, left in the fields near her house. She takes her home and grooms her in the ways of magic, having seen that this baby is special in a magical way. We then follow Maria through her turbulent life, and Salem is of course a part of the tale. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for my edition of this wonderful novel.

In the prequel to Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman takes us into the magical past and the origins of the Owens family curse. This book is a must for anyone that has read the previous novels in the Owens’ family saga and for those that haven’t, this is the book with which to begin.

It starts in the 1600s with the matriarch of the Owens line, Maria Owens, found abandoned as an infant in a snowy field. We then travel with her from England to Curcao to the persecution of witches in Salem until we finally learn the story of the curse that will define her descendants for generations to come.

I loved it. I loved the portrayal of strong women whose strongest bonds are with one another. The titular magical lessons learned are done so through heartache, despair and ultimately love. Yes, there are witches and magic, but there is so much more to this novel. It is part historical fiction, part fantasy and part love story. This book is Alice Hoffman at her lyrical best with incredible storytelling, vibrant characters and luminous prose.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Familiar yet new. Dark yet enlightening. A marvelous prequel to one of my favorites series that makes me want to reread them again!

Magic Lessons (October 2020
By Alice Hoffman
Simon and Schuster, 416 pages
★★★★

When it comes to the fine art of storytelling, few American authors can hold a black candle to Alice Hoffman. That’s the paraffin color we need to consider in Magic Lessons. In 1995, Hoffman published Practical Magic, which introduced us Gillian and Sally Owens, and their aunts Frances and Bridget. Each was gifted with conjuring power that traced back to Maria Owens, a 17th century ancestor tried for witchcraft. In 2019, Hoffman penned The Rules of Magic, a prequel set in the 1950s that gave us the backstory of aunts “Franny” and “Jet.”

This time Hoffman dishes out the über sequel, that of Maria Owens herself. We learn that she was abandoned by her mother, Rebecca, who took up with actor/conman Thomas Lockland. Maria isn’t a bloodline Owens; that’s the surname of Hannah, the woman who raises her and teaches her about herbs and spells–mostly from the white arts with admonitions of the dangers of dabbling in the black. Maria grows up with a crow named Cadin as a familiar, discovers that she floats, watches local women come to Hannah for cures, and eventually comes to grips with the knowledge that her powers exceed Hannah’s.

Tragedy will send her to Curacao, where she works through an indentured servant contract and becomes an herbalist. Alas, she has the same curse that will later befall other Owens women: her teen years involve falling in love with the wrong man. In her case, the 15-year-old Maria is impregnated by 37-year-old John Hathorne, a youthful-looking Massachusetts merchant visiting the island. (You might recognize the name!). She gives birth to Faith, whose red hair and grey eyes mark her an oddity, as does a half moon-shaped birthmark on her left hand.

Love draws Owens women to impulsive behavior and it doesn’t get much more impulsive than deciding to go to Massachusetts to search for Hathorne, over whom Maria is a besotted mooncalf. She locates him in Salem in 1680. Uh-oh! I won’t say too much more about this, other than to note that intrigue and tragedy are deflected by a Portuguese Jewish sailor/ex-pirate Samuel Dias—several times.

There are subplots in which Faith is separated from her mother, dabbles in black arts Maria counseled against, and seeks revenge against her Puritan bigot of a father. Hoffman excels at organization and manages to weave into the novel tales of Samuel’s father, a mysterious woman named Catharine Durant, a progressive doctor, new familiars, a second daughter, and several near-death experiences. You will also gain insight into grimoires (spell books), how Wall Street got its name, how the rules of magic acquired its third commandment, and—for fans of early 1960s pop songs—the actual ingredients of Love Potion # 9. Along the way, you’ll get a personalized take on Puritan intolerance, and perhaps come away thinking it might have been better had New York remained a Dutch colony. For purposes of the Hoffman witchyverse (my term), we see the power of Owens women increase with each new generation, , though not necessarily knowledge or wisdom. Hoffman ends her book as the 17th century is about to give way to a new one. Two sisters endure, Faith and Hannah, so there’s plenty of room for future Owens’ adventures. (Will there be an interquel, a sequel to a prequel?)

Alice Hoffman continues to delight with books that are to be gobbled, not nibbled. Among the spells she casts is that she reverses the photocopy curse. That is, each of her Owens family books thus far has been stronger than its templates. Each novel focuses on magic and the healing arts, but is immersive in the sense that external details unveil the customs and social milieu in which they are set. Rosemary, lavender, and Indian ginseng are said to increase creativity. Alice Hoffman must have a garden filled with them.

Rob Weir

As a huge Alice Hoffman fan and her magical realism storytelling, I had high expectations for this prequel to one of my all-time favorite books, Practical Magic. The prequel did not disappoint. It traces Maria Owens, the matriarch of the Owens family back to the 1600's, from her earliest years in England, to a young indentured servant in Curacao, to Massachusetts before and during the Salem witch trials, along with a stint as a young woman in Manhattan. The reader comes to understand the power struggles for women who are discouraged from reading and writing - skills that threaten to bring about any sort of independent ideas, though even in this backward thinking era, we find women with the inherent "smarts" to prevail in the most harrowing circumstances. While clearly there is a historical fiction thread to this story with the backdrop of the Salem witch trials, the most powerful theme for me was the unshakable bond between mothers and daughters that shapes a family across generations. This is truly a timeless story - with or without the magic spells - showing how love binds the Owens women together across centuries. So beautifully written, this prequel is a magical treasure to savor! Many thanks to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. Hands down, my favorite novel this year!

Maria was just a newborn when her mother abandoned her at a clearing in the forest near Hannah Owens’ hut. Hannah was taken with the baby and brought her up as her daughter. Hannah was a healer with the gift of sight, and Maria grew up knowing that she, too, was special in that way. Hannah’s death eleven years after Maria’s arrival at her door, was rather inevitable, for she could never refuse a woman in need, and it was precisely one who brought death with her. Maria went to live with her biological mother for a while—she was also born with “the sight”—and complemented Hannah’s teachings with some “dark arts teachings” of her own. Upon parting from her mother, Maria had been sold to indenture servitude in the island of Curacao where she would remain until she was sixteen, when, following her heart, or what passed by love at the time, she would end up in the fledging village of Salem, Massachusetts, and her life would change in irrevocable ways.

I haven’t read Practical Magic or its prequel, The Rules of Magic, to which Magic Lessons is also a prequel, so I had to base my judgment on the merits of this novel alone. Magic Lessons is mostly a narrative, well written, as expected from an author at the peak of her writing prowess, though a bit repetitive in parts. I expected the novel to be rather predictable, as Maria Owens ended up in Salem, Massachusetts, so it was inevitable to associate the plot with Salem’s witch trials, and there was a lot of that, but luckily enough Alice Hoffman avoided that pitfall by plunging the story in interesting new directions that gave it depth and plausibility.

Interestingly, I have become keen on reading Practical Magic and its prequel, so I’ll be reading more about the Owens family in the future.

Disclaimer: I received from the publisher a free e-book via Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

I enjoyed the historical fiction aspect of the book, but the plot itself moved too slowly and there was very little dialogue that would allow the reader to connect with the characters.

A slow but intriguing first half builds to a faster-paced second half in this ultimately fulfilling novel of witchcraft, womanhood, and heterosexuality.

Ethereal feeling and it tugs on the heart strings. It's so nice to go back to the origins of the Owens sisters.
A truly Magical book. Thank you for the chance to read this book in advance. This book will be a purchase for the public library.

During the time of Covid-19, though I'm an avid reader, nothing has gripped me until this beautifully-written story of love, magic, and women finding their power.

I am a huge fan of Ms. Hoffman's books about the Owens family, and this story, through its rich and poetic storytelling, filled in the world with the richness of a lush garden. In a way, the entire story felt like a garden taking us from the seeds of Maria Owen's beginning, to fullness, color, and bloom.

The story has its dark moments as well, there is loss, deception, and injustice. But in Maria Owens, we have a character to root for. She is a woman who never changes who she is, yet she changes the world.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me an ARC of this book.

Oh my! If you liked Practical Magic or The Rules of Magic then this is the very beginning of the Owens line of witches. As per normal, Alice Hoffman did a wonderful job portraying her characters and the story line is superb. I could barely put it down. As I said before this book starts the whole Owens line and explains why they are love cursed and why they are witches.

As a lover of witchcraft and stories about them this one fulfilled all my hopes. I have enjoyed The Rules of Magic and Practical Magic so I was not surprised that I enjoyed this one. The love that Maria followed only to be abandoned with her daughter. The life they had to make for themselves, everything they went through made them the women and witches they were. You even come to realize that the curse was not meant the way that future books tell it and that Maria comes to regret the curse but it is one thing that can not be reversed and that brings emotions into the reading.

The love between Maria and her daughter, Faith, is amazing. Though Faith goes into the dark magic, Maria is there to help her realize that she does not need to use the dark magic but at the same time I do not blame her one bit. For the abuse and betrayal Faith went through as a child in Salem left a dark hole in her that she tried to fill.

With the characters, story line, and the elements that Alice Hoffman always manages to put into her books, this one is no different. I recommend you read this one. It does not matter if you have read the Owens book in order or out of order they can stand on their own.

I am a huge fan of Practical Magic,

Seeing how it all started was really wonderful.
Alice Hoffman has such a way with words and her writing is impeccable.

To know where Maria came from, where she learned everything and how she was able to survive in such dire circumstances was a treat.

It's no wonder that Maria and the entire family has such strength.

If you are a fan of Alice Hoffman and/or Practical Magic - it's a must read.