The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman - Book 0.2 in the Practical Magic series
I dug right into this book, which explores the life story of "The Aunts" in the Practical Magic movie. It feels like an exceptional prequel, exactly what you'd like. Familiar but not too familiar. I loved the element of the brother, a male Owens, which is the first I've heard of it so far. His storyline is incredible and heartbreaking. Honestly, all of the Owens stories in this book are shrouded in tragedy but it feels less heavy than Magic Lessons. There's so many great love stories and not all romantic but also love stories of friendship and family. Not to say that this is a better book by any means, it just spoke to me more so than Magic Lessons. Perhaps it's the fact that it's simply in a more current era it's mostly spanning the 50's throught the 70's. Either way, the theme remains the same, love and it's power. There's no less witchy things, no lack of familiars, spells or even a dabble of dark magic here. A great read, I highly recommend. As much as I'd like to finally dive right in to Practical Magic like, right now, I still need to finish "Back In A Spell" and I'm going to make myself do that before I dive any further into this series. Fall is in FULL effect in this house, my husband is pretty sure that I'm an aspiring witch at this point 😂 Stacks of witchy books everywhere. I'm a fast reader though and I'm hoping I don't run out. Drop your favorite witchy fall reads in the comments so I can add it to my TBR 👇