The Book of Magic

The Book of Magic by Alice Hoffman is the 2021 installment in Hoffman’s Practical Magic fantasy series. The first book in the series, Practical Magic (1995), focuses on the love stories of witches named Sally and Gillian Owens. The prequel, The Rules of Magic (2017), tells the story of Jet and Franny (the aunts who raised Sally and Gillian) and their brother, Vincent. Magic Lessons (2020) details the life of Maria Owens, who cursed her descendants: Whomever they love will die. The Book of Magic is the journey to ending the curse and features three generations of Owens witches, from Jet and Franny to Sally’s daughters. Through this story, Hoffman explores several themes: The Power of Books, Bloodline Magic Versus Learned Magic, and Love as Both Sacrifice and Salvation.

This guide cites the 2022 Simon & Schuster paperback.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of illness or death, suicidal ideation and self-harm, death by suicide, emotional abuse, and substance use.

Plot Summary

Jet Owens, a bloodline witch and healer, has a premonition that she’s going to die in seven days. She spends her last days doing mundane tasks with her sister, Franny, visiting the Reverend (the father of Jet’s long-dead boyfriend), using her magical talent to help her neighbors with various ailments, and seeing her secret lover of many years, Rafael. Jet invites her nieces, Sally and Gillian, along with Sally’s daughters, to a final dinner. Then, Jet takes The Book of the Raven, a book of black magic, out of its hiding place, magically seals the last section on how to break a curse, and places it on the Owens Library shelf, along with other grimoires, or magical texts. She writes a letter about the book to Franny and places it in her book of Dickinson’s poetry.

After Jet’s funeral, Sally’s daughter, Kylie, takes the book of poetry to remember Jet. Kylie is in love with her childhood friend, Gideon, but they’ve kept their relationship a secret. Soon after Kylie confesses her love for him, he’s hit by a car and enters a coma. Kylie learns about the Owens family curse: Anyone a bloodline witch romantically loves dies. Finding Jet’s letter to Franny, Kylie recovers The Book of the Raven. It was published in London, so she travels there. Kylie finds the Invisible Library, which is a collection of occult texts. The librarian, David, helps with her research. Kylie learns that her family is connected to the Lockland family and that both families are from Essex County in England. She travels there next.

When Sally, Gillian, and Franny learn that Kylie has the black magic book and has traveled to London, they follow her. Vincent, Franny’s brother, who has the power to find missing things and people, joins them. Antonia, Kylie’s sister, is pregnant and stays behind to visit the Reverend and deal with Jet’s will. While doing the latter, Antonia falls in love with the family lawyer, Ariel. Part of Jet’s inheritance is a locked box belonging to Maria Owens.

Sally, Gillian, Franny, and Vincent go to the Invisible Library and learn that Kylie is in the village of Thornfield in the county of Essex. David and Vincent exchange numbers, and David suggests that the Owenses talk to a professor and historian of the occult, Ian. When Sally finds Ian, he’s under a hex, immobile and naked in his bed, and covered in red poison. A black magician named Tom Lockland, who is a distant cousin of the Owenses, put the hex on Ian to steal a book of magic from his collection. The Owenses break the hex, and Ian agrees to help them find Kylie.

They go to Thornfield and meet Ian’s mother, Margaret, who practices green (healing) magic but isn’t a bloodline witch. Gillian begins to have visions, and Margaret gives her a remedy for infertility. Sally and Ian fall in love. Franny suggests that Ian write about the witches of Essex when he finishes his current book, The History of Magic, using the local library, Cat’s Library, which has a collection of grimoires.

Kylie meets Tom in Thornfield. After learning that she’s a witch with bloodline powers, he puts a spell on her and steals her phone. She tells him about The Book of the Raven. They do left-handed, or black, magic together, and Kylie’s hair turns black. Tom takes the book and places it on the shore of a pond. When Kylie accidentally knocks it into the water, Jet’s seal comes undone, revealing the final spell. However, Tom uses Kylie to put the Red Death curse on Thornfield, which causes poisonous rain to fall on the village. Margaret helps treat people injured by the rain.

Kylie gets away from Tom with The Book of the Raven and meets up with her family at the local inn. Franny uses the book to lift the curse on the village, but Kylie remains ill from the red rain. Ian confronts Tom, and Tom puts another poisonous hex on Ian. Sally sacrifices her hair and her bloodline magic to save Ian’s life.

Back in Massachusetts, Antonia finally opens Maria’s locked box and finds a note detailing how to break the family curse. Franny must sacrifice herself and the family grimoire to save Gideon and stop anyone else from falling victim to the curse. Franny copies out the grimoire’s words into a journal, leaves it for Sally, and drowns herself in the local pond with the book. Gideon wakes from his coma, and Kylie recovers from the Red Death.

After Franny’s funeral, Kylie and Gideon move into Jet’s house on Magnolia Street. Kylie works at the Owens Library while getting her degree in library science, and she takes over for Jet in helping her neighbors with their ailments, using the new family grimoire. Sally leaves her job at the Owens Library, moves in with Ian, and takes a job at Cat’s Library in Thornfield. She studies green magic with Margaret and prefers it to her bloodline powers. Now free to publicly share their love, Gillian and her husband, Ben, have a baby girl, thanks to Margaret’s magical assistance. Antonia has a boy named Leo; she raises him with Ariel and the gay couple who helped inseminate her. Vincent and David fall in love and live in France together.

A year after Franny’s death, Sally and Ian get married in Massachusetts. Sally and Gillian sneak away to visit Jet and Franny’s graves, following the family tradition to give the recently deceased pieces of wedding cake. After they go swimming in a lake that Jet, Franny, and Vincent used to swim in, Sally and Gillian return to the house on Magnolia Street for the rest of the reception.