I was really looking forward to reading this book. But, I have to be honest ... I'm not so sure what all the excitement is about. For me, it was like a storybook for adults; similar to something I would read to my girls at bedtime, except this is aimed at an adult audience. It did not provoke any deep soul searching or questioning of ideals. I did not fall in love with the characters; I did not really relate to them in any meaningful way, I guess. For me, this book was just okay ...

I read this book as part of a challenge to read 100 books in one year ... and I'm blogging as I go.

Read all my thoughts on Practical Magic ...

http://takenoutofcontext-jill.blogspot.com/2010/01/practically-already-forgotten.html

If you are expected something resembles the movie you won't find it here but read it anyway. This is especially great if you have a sister and love her style of writting.

When their parents died, Sally stepped up to bad, calming the sitter down long enough to have her riffle through her mother's address book and called the aunts. If the aunts didn't step up to the plate, Sally and Gillian would become wards of the state.

The aunts took them in. While growing up, Sally and Gillian are teased and tormented while growing up, asll all Owens daughters are. Gillian, the youngest, rude and selfish, runs away at 18. Sally, ever so smart, calm and responsible, has done nothing but take care of them all, cleaning, laundry, healthy meals. She meets a man, falls in love and has two beautiful girls, Antonia and Kylie.

When her husband dies, remained in bed for year before she finally awakens and begins fresh. She's tired of the life she lives while in the aunts' house; Kylie, the youngest, is much like Sally, while Antonia is growing up just as spoiled, rude and selfish as her aunt Gillian. Desperate for a change, she buys a house on Long Island and moves the girls away.

And just when the monotony of life feels comfortable to Sally, Gillian shows up at her door in the middle of the night, her mean and abusive boyfriend, Jimmy, stone cold dead in the passenger seat of his car. In the heat of the moment, it's decided they'd bury Jimmy in the back yard.

And that's when their lives completely change…

While I thought the story was good, I had a hard time with it. Yes, the characters were interesting, watching them grow, and change from who they were to someone better, learning about themselves as they go along. When Hoffman wanted her character to be rude, the character was; happy, sad, determined… You could feel everything with the characters.

But I had such a difficult time reading this one. There were no chapters, only four parts - which made it a long story with no breathing room. It was getting to the point where my attention was wandering and I wanted to skim the pages, which I barely refrained from doing. There was no separation between scenes from the past, present, and future; it's reading memories as each of the characters are in focus, or what's to come later. And no differentiation between characters, either. And for me, that's a huge fault, and it took away from the book. I hate to say it, but if I'd read the book first, I may have never had the urge to watch the movie. And I own the movie on VHS and DVD.

However, I thought the feelings and lessons learned were beautiful. How each learned to love, forgive, forget, changing themselves into a better person, is the best part of the story. I'm rating this one 3.5 stars - I say read it and come to your own conclusions.

What a nice piece of work by the author of Here on Earth. Hoffman has contrived a very entertaining story involving several intriguing characters struggling to build new lives for themselves on the wreckage of a very troubled past. I haven't seen the movie, but the novel reads as if it had been especially written for Sandra Bullock to portray the beautiful and introverted character of Sally Owens. Hoffman possesses that magic touch which elevates the ordinary very close to the fantastic. A thoroughly enjoyable read.