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Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman

Written by Amy Harvey

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Posted on June 01 2020

I'll be honest, I saw the movie before I read the book. We all know you're meant to read the book first, but I was young and crazy...you know how it goes. By young I mean I think I saw this movie when I was about 10. I'm now not 10. 

Now, 'Practical Magic' does sit in my all time favourite movie list, in fact it's in the top 5, so I thought I should probably read the book. Enough time had passed, what was I even doing with my life? So I did. And my life is better for it. I think what was keeping me from actually reading it was that I already knew the story, so I'd be bored. But that's foolish Amy talking. Don't listen to her, she told herself she didn't like pickles and now she eats pickles on everything. 

Anyway, the book. It's nothing like the movie. In fact, it's very much not like the movie. Which is awesome, because it's like you get a whole new world of Sally and Gillian that we haven't explored before, as well as a lot more perspective from Sally's daughter point of view. We do meet the boyfriend of Sally, you know Luka from E.R, but again, his storyline is slightly different. I'd say a lot of the story is based around Sally and her determination to eliminate magic from her life. Why Sally? I want to turn a candle on by blowing on it! Why would you give that up? 

I absolutely love Alice Hoffman. She reminds me of J.K Rowling in that she is so descriptive and really creates this magical world that you can see and feel every time you turn the page. Her characters aren't exactly super loveable, in fact they have quite a few flaws, but you love them in that "I love you, you annoyingly loveable, crazy old bat" kinda way. This story captures you immediately and I could not put the book down, I needed to keep going and I absolutely love when a book captures you like that. 

There's magic and suspense, love and loss, happy times, really frustrating times (why was her daughter such a sasspants gahh chill out) and I loved it. I will say, I missed the Aunts, they don't play as much of a role in the book as they do in the movie and we definitely all needed some midnight margaritas but that's fine, I loved it and 12/10 recommend it to everyone!

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