The Book of Magic by Alice Hoffman

“Love was inside every story. Love lost and found, red love that stained your heart, the darkest love that twisted into despair or revenge, love everlasting, love that was true. You carried love with you wherever you went.”

-The Book of Magic by Alice Hoffman

September must be a time for Alice Hoffman. I first read Practical Magic six years ago to the week. It’s very fitting then, that I felt drawn back to this world to see it through to the very end. This series spans four books, following the Owens women through the wonder, love and trials of their lives across hundreds of years. And in The Book of Magic, the story comes to an end.

It’s always a little bittersweet finishing a series. I don’t ever want the story to end, and in my mind it doesn’t. I can sit back and imagine the threads of the story and what might come next for the Owens women. In this last book, Jet Owens is sitting in the library when she hears the clicking of a deathwatch beetle, and suddenly, she knows that she only has seven days to live. So she spends her last seven days with those that she loves the most, her sister, Franny, the love of her life, Rafael, her nieces Gillian and Sally, and Sally’s daughters, Kylie and Antonia. But it’s not long after she hears the deathwatch beetle that she finally comes to understand how to break the Owens curse.

“What you wind up regretting aren’t the things you do, it’s what you don’t do that you will never forgive yourself for.”

The Owens women are cursed to fall in love only to lose it. For Sally, this has meant the loss of her two husbands. For Franny and Jet, the loss of their first loves. For Gillian, falling in love with the wrong man once, and now loving the right man but unable to be with him for fear of the curse. But Kylie and Antonia have been shielded their entire life from the truth of their family’s curse, and Kylie is very much in love and discovers it too late. When her boyfriend, Gideon, is hit by a car, Kylie knows she will do whatever it takes to save him, even if it means turning to forbidden, dark magic that will change her forever.

This book is gorgeous and perfect in every possible way. I didn’t intend to read it as quickly as I did, but I finished it in less than twenty-four hours because once I’d started, I couldn’t stop. I had to know how it all ended. It’s sad and layered with more darkness than the first four books, but it is incredibly beautiful and full of love too.

“What you put out into the world came back to you threefold. If you could not accept yourself, you would be reviled and cast out, adrift in the world.”

One of the things I love about this series and about Alice Hoffman’s stories in general, is that she shows that love isn’t a one size fits all formula. We don’t all find love in the ordinary way, and we don’t hold onto it in the same way either. Love is a bolt of lightning, hitting each of us when we least expect it but filling our lives with the stars we’d been searching for our entire lives. Alice Hoffman has a way of making you believe in love at first sight, in love that comes quickly or love that lingers and stays in your heart forever. It’s beauty and magic. But it’s not just romantic love either. Love between sisters, love between parents and children, love between friends, love between lovers. Each relationship is meaningful, powerful, and all of these instances of love fill our lives with more beauty and life than we could ever hope for.

I will always be in awe of her writing. Her books will always find me exactly when I’m meant to read them, and I will always hold the words, characters and love this series has made me felt close to my heart.

“Always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder, keep rosemary by your garden gate, plant lavender for luck, and fall in love whenever you can.”