Rating: ★★★

Here’s another book I’ve read as an audiobook, which really seems to be working for me lately. It was narrated by Christina Moore and her voice alone is magical. Highly enjoyed her reading. I read this book in about 9 days. It pulled me along and I enjoyed it. It had its emotional moments that made me tear up a little, about mothers, daughters, and sisters, which affected me since my only sibling is my sister and we’re incredibly close, and my mother passed away in 2018. There’s a moment in the book where the youngest daughter is imagining missing and remembering certain things about her mother – how she purses her lips – and that may be one of the moments that really sticks with me.

To summarize the book, it simply follows the Owens’ girls – their lives, their relationships, their thoughts, their imaginations. Sally and Gillian are sisters, and Antonia and Kylie are Sally’s daughters. They all may have equal amounts of time given to them throughout the book. Sally and Gillian were raised by their strange aunts and so were always the weirdos in school. Sally, as an adult with children, wanted nothing to do with that and wanted her girls to feel normal, so she moved far away. Gillian, though, became a real wild child. All of this is so interesting, deep, and moving…

However, in the end, it didn’t feel hit home since the main theme was about romantic relationships. The book would talk a lot of the familial relationships, and center the plot around what sisters needed to do together, and about the loss of parents. It would talk about self-shame, self-worth, devastation, desperation, humiliation. There was little action, and would simply follow the characters and their actions, which I personally do love. But then it’d swing back to romantic relationships being the most important thing anyone could ever experience.

Every character in the story, everyone, is a part of relationship, or was heartbroken at some point. I’ll be honest that for me, one romance in a story is usually too much unless it really makes sense, isn’t a cliche, and isn’t shoehorned in, so maybe others will enjoy all of this going on. But my main issue is the balance between emotional, familial relationships, and the need to be in a romantic relationship. I think the former would have been more important in this book.

To think about the book in comparison to the movie, it’s like they’re two separate stories completely. The characters’ names are the same, and there are a handful of similar elements, but I think this book stands on its own. There is no “magic” ever done as shown in the movie. It’s more a feeling the characters have or give to others, or an interesting recipe. There are supernatural things that happen, and I like the idea of magic being small, little things that are apart of someone’s life, instead of great big cauldrons and fireballs. So this worked for me as well.

Overall, I would recommend it cautiously. Half of the book’s focus is so strong, and then every time romance comes in, it kills it. But of course, I did enjoy it and read it quickly. So maybe it would be worth a read.