I found this book both entertaining and delightful. It is about two sisters Gillian and Sally who grow up in their aunts' house. The aunts seem to have magical or mythical powers and use herbs or potions to accomplish whatever tasks are presented to them. The book started out talking about the sisters as children and ended with them grown up, and Sally has children of her own. I really enjoyed this book. It presented enough mystery and romance to spice up the time spent reading the book. It was definitely a worthwhile experience.

I just love this book and always have. I've read it several times.

or most adults, fairy tales are among the childish things we've put away. Alice Hoffman, however, feels differently. Practical Magic starts out as a tale of Gillian and Sally Owens, two orphaned girls whose aunts are witches--of a mild sort. For the past two centuries, Owens women have been blamed for all that has gone wrong in their Massachusetts town, ever since their ancestor arrived, rich, independent, and soon accused of theft: "And then one day, a farmer winged a crow in his cornfield, a creature who'd been stealing from him shamelessly for months. When Maria Owens appeared the very next morning with her arm in a sling and her white hand wound up in a white bandage, people felt certain they knew the reason why." The aunts are daily ostracized by the same upstanding citizens who sneak to their house at night for magical love cures. To the sisters they are for the most part benevolently absent, though their bell, book, and candle routine makes life a torment for Gillian, beautiful and blonde and lazy, and Sally, who's all too responsible. But when one of the aunts' cures works too well, ending as a curse, the dangers of real love become all too clear. In Hoffman's world being bewitched, bothered, and bewildered is no mere metaphor--and neither is desire. The elbows of one enamored man pucker a linoleum counter, another walks around with singed cuffs. It's difficult to catch the author's power in brief quotes. She needs space and increment to build her exquisite variations of vision and reality, her matter-of-fact announcements of the preternatural. Practical Magic again and again makes one recall the thrill of hearing at bedtime, "Now will I a tale unfold..." --Kerry Fried--This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

Having seen the movie first, I was pleasantly surprised by what really happened with the Owens women. So much was left out of the screen play about the three generations of extraordinary women learning how to be women at three different stages of their lives that it almost seems like a completely different world. I was pleasantly surprised by the romantic content as well; the room definitely heated up during a couple of chapters. I'm definitely keeping this one.

I enjoyed this story of two pairs of sisters whose lives were touched by magic. I especially liked how both Gillian and Sally and Kylie and Antonia learned to take risks, trust their feelings and appreciate each other over time.

Great book, very interesting. A story of two girls, Gillian and Sally. When their parents die, they are sent to live with two aunts. These aunts are witches and the girls grow up having their family blamed for anything that goes wrong in the house. They grow up and leave the aunts but all are brought together in the end. Good summer reading!

I enjoyed this book, although it was quite different from the movie.

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The book differs a little from the movie. (I saw the movie before reading the book.) I thought it was a fun, quick read.

This Book is..as most often are..extremly different than the film. Personally, I enjoyed the movie more.

Very different from the movie, but wonderful in its own way.

wonderful book - great characterization. alice hoffman never disappoints.

For more than two hundred years, the Owens women had been blamed for everything that went wrong in their Massachusetts town. And Gillian and sally endured that fate as well: As children, the sisters were forever outsiders, taunted, talked about, pointed at.Their elderly aunts almost seemed to encourage the whispers of witchery, with their musty house and their exotic concoctions and their crowd of black cats. But all Gillian and Sally wanted was to escape. One would do so by marrying, the other by running away. But the bonds they shared, even into adulthood, brought them back -- almost as if by magic.

An excellent book.

I liked the book as I also liked other books written by the same author. It is about witches and witchraft- thugh these are "good" witchs-so not for anyone who would be offended bythe idea of magic.

fun, but the fantasy is a bit belabored. also, not such a big fan of the perfect men who tend to appear in this type of book. oh well.

Captivating! Couldn't put it down.

Part fairy tale, part accomplished fiction. A great story!

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