Reviews

Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman

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rfish0615's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

bonniecanread's review against another edition

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3.0

It was cute... the movie was better.

taylor_broek's review against another edition

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2.0

Skimmed / skipped the last 30% because WTF does AH have against cats?? So much mistreatment and animal abuse in this book.

I wanted to read this book and finally fully watch the movie this spooky season but a half assed read is what it will have to be because despite my best efforts and the relatively short length of the book I just couldn’t full read this book. I read the rules of magic before this and AH said the order doesn’t matter but I found my self confused by who the main characters in the book were and who overlapped with that book.

Where I had to call it quits was when 13 year old kylie was running for her life for not plot pushing reason imo. what was the point of having 2 men chase a 13 year old girl with the implied intention to SA her? Literally no point. If anything I thought that would be a great point to put some “practical magic” to use but no such thing. Up until that point the only magic in the book was kylie seeing peoples auras and seeing the ghost of one dead man and butter melting once. At the begging of the story there were the spells made by the aunties but when sally left that life the “magic” left too.

There were things I liked about the book but just not enough to make me stay. You could say my relationship with this book was similar to Gillian and jimmys sometimes good and it made me want to stay with it but mostly so bad o couldn’t believe how long I had stayed so far

acs8037's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful

4.0

As someone who grew up loving the movie (and reading this for the first time) I loved some of the takeaway quotes. Like

“It’s easy to forget what you do in the dark, if you need to.”

And of course

And fall in love whenever you can.

But I had a hard time with the plot lines sometimes. And the relationships between the sisters.

cassandrat's review against another edition

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I just didn't care at all. Also, it reads like a weird fairy tale in a way that is just aggravating. I keep trying to get into whimsical things like, "the aunts spoiled her and encouraged her cruelty and so she became nasty" as if it is a fairy tale, but then it is contemporary and the mom is trying to be real and everything is melodramatic. It feels like a clash of whimsy and bland memoir sometimes. I can't.

Pros: kind of evil witches

I read that the girls have no friends. Gillian leaves and is in love all the time. Sally is rarely in love, and gets really heartbroken and irrational. Everything is about being pretty or not. The aunts like capriciousness and try to raise children like that. Sally wants to be normal. There's a new careful what you wish for that is pretty crude.