This may not be a popular opinion, but I think I much prefer Magic Lessons to Practical Magic. Where I felt it difficult to empathize with the Owens in Practical Magic I was captivated by the story of Maria and Faith.

Hoffman's descriptions were beautiful and I couldn't help but imagine what every garden and landscapes would look like and smell like. Her research must have been quite extensive spells, herbs, and history perfectly combine to form a completely fleshed out novel.

What a wonderful joy to finally have the Owens' origin story, and the reason for the curse fully fleshed out. A real gift to Hoffman fans and a great place to dive in for those who are unfamiliar with her works. I'm only sad that it had to end.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for allowing me to read this story. This book brings us to the beginning of the Owens family of witches. We heard some of the tale in Practical Magic and The Rules of Magic. But this takes us right back to when it all began, with Hannah Owens, and a child named Maria that she raises as her own.
She teaches her about different herbs and medicines, and spells. But when Maria's birth mother comes, she brings hell with her. Hannah is killed and Maria meets both her mother and father. She ends up fending for herself. She learns everything she can and writes everything down in her own grimoire, as well as from Hannah's and her birth mothers. And from this point on Maria is on her own, except for Cadin, her familiar( a crow).What happens next, you'll just have to read and find out.

This extraordinarily novel, a prequel to Practical Magic, captured my heart and imagination from its very first chapter. Alice Hoffman weaves the magical tale of several generations of women - Hannah and Rebecca, Maria and Faith - and the unfortunate choices in love they made which set in motion a curse that would take hundreds of years to break.
First was Hannah's journey, finding an abandoned baby in a field and raising her to learn the Unnamed Arts. At a tender age, Maria experienced the loss of one mother and abandonment by the other, a fate which led to her journey from the shores of England to the shores of America in the mid 1600's. Maria's sad tale of love led her to Salem Ma, where she chose the wrong man and lost the right one. A sequence of events which also led her to lose her daughter Faith. Faith's journey was experiencing years of trauma and feelings of abandonment that scarred her heart. Her battle with love was not with a man but within herself, causing a hardening of her heart and a battle between left and right magical practice.
The lessons to be learned and live by were "Do as you will but harm no one, What you give will be returned to you threefold, and finally the biggest lesson: Fall in love whenever you can."
This book will be released in October. I urge you to snap it up as I highly recommend getting lost in an interesting look behind the trials of Salem. It's a true jewel of a book when the day after reading it you miss the characters, and wish you could continue to peak through the window into their lives and stories. I miss the Owens women already.
A huge thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for providing me with a pre-release copy of this book to read in exchange for my honest review, all thoughts and opinions shared in this review are my own.

I really loved this book. It was just one of those books that for some reason really resonated with me and I could just feel the emotions in the book. The writing was beautiful!!

I had never read anything by Alice Hoffman before and it wasn't what I was expecting at all. I love books about magic and witches and I thought it was going to be really fantasy and magic based, but it also had way more romance and historical fiction aspects then I was expecting. Romance isn't usually my top genre but it was done in a very real way that was not cringy at all. I really enjoyed it!

This book covered so many topics that I love. The love and connection between a mother and daughter, compassion and understanding of others, the bonds of family, injustice and standing up to patriarchy, the power of words and very strong female characters!

I loved how strong the female characters were but that they still varied in their personalities and outlook on life. They were very strong and confident and were not afraid to live their lives on their own terms, the way they were meant to live it, no matter how hard they had to fight for that right. I really enjoyed the array of different personalities that the women had. I find that many books who try to portray strong female characters tend to portray them as women who hate love and never show their emotions. I personally don't think that these traits and strong women have to be mutually exclusive. You can cry when you feel sad and be head over heels for someone and still be a strong independent woman.

Also, loved the last paragraph! It was perfect; this book talks a lot about the power of words and it really closed the story on a powerful note. I mean bad things happen to everyone at times in their life but I truly believe that overall, what we put out into the world is what we get back from it.

I did not read the other books in the series so I don't think you need to as it didn't change my love for the book, but I have already put Practical Magic on hold at my library.

I received a copy of this book through Netgalley in exchange for my honest opinion.

Beautifully written and sentimental, Magic Lessons is just the type of book best read with a mug of apple cider by one’s side on a brisk Fall day – cliché to be sure, but certainly inviting to that kind of experience.

My interest in this book was piqued by the idea of a prequel to Practical Magic (I haven’t read the book, but I’m fond of the film and generally give it a watch come every Halloween). Adaptations could go both ways, but I’ve found that many thrive in film where they fall short in source material that is wanting stylistically but rich in concept. While I have yet to test this theory with Practical Magic, I was pleased to learn that Magic Lessons doesn’t suffer any lack of detail or imagination, making me hopeful for the author’s other works. From the get go Hoffman does a skilful job of setting a scene; the story opens on a cold January day when a babe is found in a snow-laden field, taken up by a witch whose philosophies of magic and love will serve generations to come. Thus begins the story of Maria Owens, whose humble beginnings lend little precursor to a life of loss, love, betrayal, and finding herself all over again.

To echo the sentiments of many, Magic Lessons is lush with details and casually shows its familiarity with history and lore in every paragraph. More than a story, this book is a great primer for understanding life in the 17th century through various geographical terrains, whether in rural England, the tropical seaside Curaçao, developing New York, and, most intriguingly, in Massachusetts when the Salem witch trials were at their height, offering an inventive alternative history that leverages real historical landmarks and figures. By land and sea, Magic Lessons is a novel of voyages, taking the reader by unexpected turns, promising nothing while delivering more than one bargained for.

I think I’ll be taking a little break from the Owens’ family, but am very curious to see what’s in store when I revisit them in The Rules of Magic and Practical Magic.

Thank you immensely to Simon & Schuster and Netgalley for this spellbinding read!

I had just finished reading The World That We Knew when my request for this book was approved. I was excited to read another Alice Hoffman book!

I was unaware of the other books in this series but was able to read this one without the surrounding books (although I am going to be reading Practical Magic and Rules of Magic as well).

I loved this book and truly felt I was back in the 1600's while reading it. I really did not want to put it down and had to stop reading so I could get to sleep. I would recommend setting up a good block of time to read this book straight through. The lists of herbs/concoctions felt sort of strange in the middle of the story but other than that it was perfect. There is sadness and death and tragedy but overall it is a book about love.

Thank you to Net Galley and Simon and Schuster for the advanced copy of this book.

This book explores where it all once started, with the original Owens curse. During the 1600s, Maria Owen travels to the new Americans, abandoned by her parents. Here shes called a multiple of thing, a witch, a healer, the devil but her only goal is to help others through her powers and to not fall in love.

This is my first book by Hoffman and I was not disappointing. This book took me through a world wind of emotions, hatred, love and frustration. Every emotion that was felt by Maria went strait to my heart. It is beautifully written and all of the character and amazingly developed. I loved seeing the characters change and grow into themselves as we follow them through the years. I loved how independent and strong willed Maria was, despite any women being called a witch for having spoken her mind, Maria breaks these rules. She makes her own and lives life according to her own compass.

Later we are introduced to her daughter, Faith, which gives great juxtaposition to Maria. Even if you hate or love a character, you can always feel the character.

Alice Hoffman has created another unique and engrossing story with Magic Lessons and I highly recommend you pick it up.

Alice Hoffman’s books are always a surprise, but always something original, thought provoking and beautifully written. This is a book about magic, about family, about love and loss, about injustice and about history. Full of Hoffman's magical prose, vivid descriptions, the Owens family history and the Salem Witch Trials.

This is a story about the fear, hate and injustices of man against those things that they cannot understand. The women who practiced the “Unnamed Arts” were gifted individuals who understood the medicinal properties of plants. Branded as witches they were persecuted for centuries and ultimately culminated in the Salem Witch Trials in the 17th century.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Canada who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Wow. This is an enchanting story that goes much further than being a story about a woman accused of being a witch. This is a story of true and unending love, that of a mother for her child and a woman for a man. It is a story of strength and believing in yourself. Maria is a strong woman that has faced much sadness yet she stays true to what is right and never lets her faith in truth go astray.

The characters in this book are deep and richly developed. I could easily picture them in my mind and I found it easy to relate to their lives.

While this is a fairly long book I found it could have included even more details as it was so well written nothing seemed trivial. I loved how this wasn’t just about casting a spell but more about herbs and the medicinal uses of them. It was about working hard for what you want in life and staying true to your values.

There was one character I would have like to seen get his comeuppance but perhaps that would take away all of the good in the book. I would highly recommend everyone to read it as you will be swept away by this magical story and magnificent characters.

Thank you to Netgalley and Simon and Schuster Canada for allowing me to read this beautiful book.

Unbelievable. Alice Hoffman never fails to disappoint, I’ve devoured nearly everything she’s written and am just in awe of what she does. For me it’s the FEEL of her words, the atmosphere she creates every time, surrounding you with story, immersing you into its depths. This is the third in her books about the Owens women, this time taking us all the way back to their origins, to the matriarch Maria Owens in the 17th century, from England to Curacao and inevitably into the dark time of the Salem witch trials. Hoffman’s practised hand with history and magical realism and character all weave so seamlessly into brilliant storytelling I hated for it to end. But there is still plenty of room for her to continue with more stories of this magical family And I can’t wait to read more.

Even though there is minimal dialogue, I enjoy Alice Hoffman's style of writing. Although it wasn't necessarily a quick or particularly easy read, I found the historical fiction mixed with magic to be really interesting and the characters complex and beautifully human.

I had high hopes for Magic Lessons after really enjoying The Rules of Magic, but unfortunately, this was not for me. I felt like Magic Lessons lacked the charm of The Rules of Magic and there wasn't as much focus on the characters' personalities and relationships. This book seemed to drag out a lot and Maria and Faith weren't as developed as I would've liked. I didn’t relate to Maria and she didn’t have many motivations besides finding lost people. She also seemed to do a lot of things just because she had seen it already. I was hoping Faith would be a redeeming character, but she lost me with her abrupt change later in the novel. It felt really out of character and didn’t fit with the tone of her personality. The only characters I mildly enjoyed and felt any sort of emotional attachment to were Samuel and Abraham Dias.

This story has more background history and descriptions of the setting, but I wasn’t really interested in those aspects of the novel. I also understand that this book takes place in the 1600s when it was okay for younger girls to be with older men, but it still made me uncomfortable by how often men were distracted by Maria and Faith’s good looks when they were children.

I guess I expected something else from this novel, but I'm sure those interested in the history of witches would appreciate this novel more than I did.

Witches, curses, the Salem trials and most of all the Owens family starting with Marie!

It cant get better than that.

You follow Marie's journey as she is born into the sisterhood of magic , her journey and the birth of her daughter.

There are rules to magic, potions and spells and when they get broken you can only blame yourself as it will come back to get you.

So many strong women in this book that lived through a horrific time in Salem .

There is so much more to this book than that though.

I thoroughly enjoyed it , makes me want to go back and read the other books in the series.

Well done!

Thanks to NetGalley, Simon and Schuster Canada, Simon and Schuster for a bewitching read that I got lost in.

A herbaceous story abounding in the famous Owens trinity of love, heartbreak, and sacrifice. ‘Magic Lessons’ takes the reader to the beginning of Maria Owens and the curse that will haunt her ancestors for generations to come. We witness her precarious birth, her green witch childhood, and her trials and tribulations as a young witch learning to navigate her heart through the witch hunt craze in Europe and in the New World.

It’s a story that conjures courage in the face of adversity, love in the presence of heartbreak, power in the depths of sorrow, and faith in the ability to do the right thing. As beguiling as this work of fiction is, the simple lessons of being good and true no matter the obstacle is one that connects us back to our heart, if we are willing to take a risk and listen to it. Magic holds a responsibility in the 'Practical Magic' series as both the mysterious messengers of fate and purpose and the thorny consequences of breaking the rules.

Herbs, spells, rituals, hedge witchery, and healing remedies are integral components of this bewitching story. The characters are persevering and inspiring in their refusal to waiver from their heart’s calling. They are my favourite characters so far in this series because I felt they had the most chutzpah and strength compared to their descendents. I loved the grimoire inspired notes featured throughout the story and the abundance and variety of magic.

Overall, another spellbinding read by Alice Hoffman that will inspire readers to learn the lesson and follow the rule of ...falling in love whenever you can.