Is there an audiobook of Practical Magic?

Yes. Practical Magic has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Christina Moore.

How long is the Practical Magic audiobook?

The Practical Magic audiobook runs 9 hr 12 min.

Is Practical Magic on Kindle Unlimited?

No. Practical Magic was not included with Kindle Unlimited when we last checked on August 27, 2026.

Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman book cover for the Book of the Day magical realism book review

Our score

4.3/ 5

Excellent

Listen to Practical Magic free with an Audible trial Narrator, runtime & our audio review

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EDITION PUBLISHEDAugust 2003

Genres

Fiction Magical Realism Women's Fiction

Themes

Sisterhood and the pull of familyInherited reputation and small-town crueltyLove that arrives with a cost attachedMothers, daughters, and what gets passed down

Practical Magic

Name: Practical Magic
Price: 12.99 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Alice Hoffman

Alice Hoffman

Alice Hoffman's Practical Magic follows the Owens sisters, Sally and Gillian, raised by two eccentric aunts in a Massachusetts town that has blamed their family for its bad luck for two hundred years. A magical realism novel about inheritance and sisterhood that runs darker and sadder than the movie it inspired.

The Review

Our take

The Owens sisters figure out early that a rumor is a kind of weather, and the only thing to do is live inside it. Sally and Gillian grow up in a Massachusetts town that has spent two hundred years blaming their family for its bad luck, in a house that smells of lilac with something bitter underneath, raised by two aunts who never bother to correct anyone. Sally wants a normal life so badly she can taste it. Gillian wants out of the state. One marries, one runs, and Alice Hoffman spends the rest of Practical Magic showing what each of those exits costs.

The novel is stranger and sadder than its reputation. Most of it is domestic. Sally raises two daughters in a tidy house on a street where nothing happens, and Hoffman gives that stretch the same attention she gives the aunts' concoctions: the specific silence of a kitchen at four in the afternoon, a mother listening to her teenager come in and deciding not to ask. The magic never leaves, but it stops being decorative. It shows up as consequence and inheritance, the thing that arrives whether or not you sent for it.

Anyone coming to the book from the 1998 film should know the two are not the same animal, and that difference is worth naming plainly. The movie is a comedy about sisterhood with a dark second act. The novel is magical realism with a genuine mean streak, more interested in what the town's cruelty did to two girls than in any spell. Gillian's arrival on Sally's doorstep, which the film plays for panic and laughs, lands here closer to grief. The margarita scene is not in this book. Fifteen years of Sally performing ordinariness is, and Hoffman makes you feel every one of them. The Owens family gets another turn on screen this month, when Practical Magic 2 opens on September 11 adapting Hoffman's later novel The Book of Magic, and the original is still the right door into the family.

Hoffman's prose is why the book has lasted. She writes weather and gardens and food with a precision that never tips into fussiness, and she is very good on adolescent girls: Antonia beautiful and unbearable, Kylie shooting up too fast and losing her balance in more ways than one. The best passages belong to the aunts, who turn up late in Sally's suburban life like two crows landing on a mailbox, and whose practical advice about love is the least sentimental thing in the novel. I laughed out loud at them twice.

Why you should read

Magical realism with a real mean streak
Sister stories where neither one is the good one
Small-town outsiders and inherited reputations
Fans of the film who want the darker source

What to expect

290 pages, mostly domestic and character-driven
Magic as consequence rather than spectacle
A slower middle set in suburban ordinariness
Sharper and sadder in tone than the 1998 movie

What holds all of it together is the sisters. Hoffman refuses to make either one the good one. Sally's competence curdles into control, Gillian's charm is a way of never being held responsible, and the book keeps putting them in the same room until they run out of ways to avoid the conversation. Magic here is the family's word for everything they cannot outrun: the reputation, the blood, the curse that keeps taking the men who love them. The town never stops talking. By the last page the Owens women have stopped listening, which in this novel is the closest thing to a spell that actually works.

Reviewed by Avery · How our reviews are written

Our verdict

4.3/ 5

Excellent

Listen to Practical Magic free with an Audible trial Narrator, runtime & our audio review

Buy on Amazon

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Prices may vary.

Where to read or listen

Is there an audiobook of Practical Magic?: Yes. Practical Magic has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Christina Moore.
Listen to Practical Magic free with an Audible trial
We earn from qualifying Amazon purchases.
How long is the Practical Magic audiobook?: The Practical Magic audiobook runs 9 hr 12 min.
Is Practical Magic on Kindle Unlimited?: No. Practical Magic was not included with Kindle Unlimited when we last checked on August 27, 2026.
How much does Practical Magic cost?: On Amazon: Kindle $12.99, Paperback $12.53, Hardcover $15.62. Prices as of September 7, 2026 at 3:21 AM EDT and may change.

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Common questions

What is Practical Magic about?: The Owens sisters figure out early that a rumor is a kind of weather, and the only thing to do is live inside it. Sally and Gillian grow up in a Massachusetts town that has spent two hundred years blaming their family for its bad luck, in a house that smells of lilac with something bitter…
Is Practical Magic worth reading?: We scored Practical Magic 4.3 out of 5. Alice Hoffman's Practical Magic follows the Owens sisters, Sally and Gillian, raised by two eccentric aunts in a Massachusetts town that has blamed their family for its bad luck for two hundred years. A magical realism novel about inheritance and sisterhood that runs darker and…