1950’s Massachusetts: two very different young women attend Radcliffe College. Ava has grown up shut away from other people on an apple orchard, with her religious and controlling parents who don’t want her to know her true self. And Lauren comes from a wealthy family and from a long line of wild women, but after losing her parents, she never wants to get hurt again. Both are inducted into the Lilith Society, a sorority that’s a long kept secret since colonial times and only accepts witches. Without intending to, the two girls form a strong magical bond that keeps them together, even as their choices and paths lead them in very different direction.

Alice Hoffman is of course the author of Practical Magic and it’s prequel and sequel books. The sequel to the movie adaptation is also out this month, Practical Magic 2 with Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman reprising their roles. Her books often have an element of magic realism to them, and her writing style has a beautiful storybook, layered style. I really like the way she writes. It’s literary, nuanced, full of layers of detail and strong women and female friendships. Her books can be romantic too, but they also often talk about broken hearts, dark men, or surviving what life throws at us, to live a more beautiful life. She understands the human experience, the human spirit. We can hide from love, but it’s the only thing that heals us. We can hide from who we are, hide our magic and our shine, but only for so long. I really enjoy her work, and I think I’ve read all or almost all of her books. (I have a list of them, with links to the ones I’ve reviewed HERE) Not all her books about about witches and magic, but a few of them are.

This book about the Witches of Cambridge is Book One of a new series. I’m curious about which characters and what era the next book will be about! It’s broken into years of their degree, First Year, Second Year, etc, and also has chapters that wind back, like a second narrative, about the first witch in 1600s on the land that would become Radcliffe, and how the college was founded.

All the elements are here that made Practical Magic so good. We have old families with inherited magical abilities, a beautiful old home, and two women who are very different but held together through magic and a strong bond. We also have the lyrical, detailed and winding writing that Alice Hoffman does so well. This feels like a new thing, while also being a spiritual successor to some of her popular witchy books.

I was really excited to read this book and I did enjoy the journey the whole time, but it’s not as solid as some of her previous work. There wasn’t anything major about it that was wrong or bad, but I felt like the relationship between the two girls, Ava and Lauren, wasn’t fully developed and a few small things like that. It lacked, very slightly, her usual depth. The book also dives into comparing witch trials and McCarthyism, which felt heavy handed sometimes, like perhaps the publisher needed there to be a strong social message. She’s added some fascinating details about life in the 50’s, and Radcliffe College and things that were happening in the era, but there were times it wasn’t as deeply woven into the narrative as it usually is, and stood out as being Research. She mentioned the theory about the Salem Witch Trails being influenced by ergot poisoning, which has long since been disproved.

That said, though, I loved this book. I was trying not to read it too fast so that it lasted longer, and I’m already looking forward to the next book. I think that there’s something so beautiful and unique about the way that this author writes and tells a story, and her understanding of life, of the ways we try to survive and avoid hurt, of grief and love and losing our way, and of the loves that save us in the end… And this book still has all of that. It made me think about digging back into my shelf of her books and re-reading some of them.

Read It If: you love witchy reads or read Practical Magic recently, and want more. A lovely, magical, detailed read.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada for the ARC of this book for review.