Over twenty years after publishing Practical Magic, Hoffman takes her readers back a generation in the first prequel: Rules of Magic. Through love, the Owens sisters find their way back to their family and themselves.

Practical Magic, concludes with the power of love-between family and lovers both. But in the end, it is a story that reminds us all we must be who we are in resisting our identity we tend to court chaos. Ultimately, this is a story of magic and mystery, of love and fear, of curses and confusions. The novel witnesses the joys and tragedies of their young adult lives before fate brings them back together many years later. The sisters, opposite in so many ways, find different paths to normalcy. Against the backdrop of all this magic and freedom, however, Sally and Gillian grow up wanting only to fit in to normal life. Village women come to the backdoor when the light is on at dusk for salves against life’s pains and challenges. In fact, the aunts appear to encourage the mysterious distrust the town has of them and their witchy ways, as they exist on the outskirts and rarely leave their seemingly enchanted and ancient home. Life for the girls on Magnolia Street is anything but conventional few rules bind their childhoods, unlike other little girls, and their aunts are anything but maternal. As little girls, Sally and Gillian’s world turns upside down and they end up living with two elderly aunts in a mysterious old house on Magnolia Street in a sleepy Massachusetts town. Practical Magic tells the story of Gillian and Sally Owens set contemporaneously to its publication at the close of the twentieth century. Each novel explores the themes of love, sisterhood, and women supporting women, always with a health dose of magic stirred in. Hoffman’s novels build prequel upon prequel as she works closer and closer to the root of the Owens’ family story and its curse.

By reading all three novels together, I enjoyed a month of magically lovable witches battling the challenges and frustrations of being independent creatures in a world that doesn’t appreciate their unconventional style or power. Thus, I convened with the Owens family in Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magic (1995), Rules of Magic (2017), and Magical Lessons (2020). As the days grew cooler and darker in October, I found myself increasingly drawn to mood reading books like Alice Hoffman’s magical series, in part because her latest prequel of the series came out early in the month.

The rules of magic hoffman