strange and random happenstance: Magic Lessons

The Witches of Cambridge by Alice Hoffman
Published by: Scribner
Publication Date: September 8th, 2026
Format: Hardcover, 416 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Ava has grown up cloistered and unaware of who she is. Her first night away from home all of her mother's warnings come back to her: "Lock the door, call out if there is a stranger, stay away from girls who go out at midnight, beware those who wish to take you to the world underground, where there are no rules and no way to return to all that you've known." But what she learns that first night at Radcliffe is that everything she's ever known is a lie and the girl standing above her bed asking her to leap out a window at midnight is her other half. Ava and Lauren are opposites in every way, light and dark, the flower and the hazel branch. Even fire and ice to match their coloration. Ava didn't even know witches existed. She knew she was different, growing up in Maine in the 1940s she wasn't allowed to socialize with other children and occasionally had to be tethered in the family orchard so she wouldn't take to the skies, but a witch!?! That's the stuff of fairy tales. Until she meets Lauren. Lauren is from a tony Cambridge family of witches that trace their ancestry back to the 1600s. In other words, Lauren knows that witches exist because she's one of them. And she knows that Ava is a witch because why else would she be assigned as her roommate for the one night they have to stay in the dorms. Because witches don't live in dorms, they live in a special house run by the Lilith Society that began not long after the first witch of Cambridge came to settle in the marshlands in 1693. So while technically they are Radcliffe students, they are something else as well, not by choice, or by reason, but by legacy. And after they find their invitations and sneak out the window an act of salvation binds them together forever. An act that will save them time and time again as they battle with their own legacies. Because Ava doesn't know why or how she's in Cambridge but she starts to find letters hidden in books written by the First Witch. She starts to realize their is way more to her past than her mother has ever told her. And then she falls in love with the wrong person, Jamie Mather. He comes from a long line of dangerous men. Lauren's grandmother has always said that the Mathers did something that could never be forgiven. And here's Ava giving him her heart. Which is why Lauren has hardened hers. Ever since the death of her parents she has gravitated towards the dark. The Crooked Path calls to her. Which brings danger to Lilith House. McCarthyism is gripping the nation and when one of their number disappears before the graduation ceremony at the end of their first year they know they are being targeted. Can two friends overcome their differences to right the wrongs around them or will they selfishly care only for themselves?

I had an internal struggle as to whether I'd pick up this book right now because after reading all of her Practical Magic series I was kind of burned out on Alice Hoffman. There's only so far you can get on vibes alone. Sure, there's a comfort factor, but sometimes that just isn't enough. But then two things lured me in, McCarthyism and dark academia. Two things that actually have next to nothing to do with this book and seem to be just a veneer of time and place. As Tim Curry memorably says in Clue; "Communism was just a red herring." The "specter" of McCarthyism affects none of our characters in any way and seems to be more a "teachable moment" like the lack of contraception. Over and over again we hear about witch hunts and the danger from hunters but Lauren's brother is in far more danger from the Lavender Scare than she and Ava ever were from hunters. As for the aura of fear hanging over Lilith House? That was because Lauren was going down the left-handed path and her professor/lover killing her housemates. The fact that the police weren't able to figure out what happened to their fellow housemates still baffles me. All three women were connected to him and yet the police just couldn't figure it out. Probably because they were too busy trying to get laid by Lauren's brother. Yet this all pales in comparison to the real problem of this book, she is now outright plagiarizing herself. There is a similarity to all of Alice Hoffman's books which is comforting. But which, as I mentioned before, is sometimes not enough. Here though the similarities attained a new level. She is lifting her own material to make a new book. Cutting and pasting the legacy of the Owens family to begin a new witchy series. I wouldn't make this accusation without proof, so let me lay it on you. The Witches of Cambridge is two entwined stories. The first is ostensibly about a trio of witches, two "sisters" and their gay brother. The second is about the First Witch of Cambridge. The problem is, I've read these two stories before. The first is The Rules of Magic about Franny, Jet, and Vincent Owens and their growing up starting in the late fifties. In fact Franny was supposed to attend Radcliffe so this reads almost as an alternative timeline. The second is Magic Lessons, a long slog of a read about Maria Owens and her life, but more importantly the curse she laid on her family. I hated reading Magic Lessons so much that reading a simulacrum of her story with the First Witch of Cambridge gave me PTSD. There are just constant reminders that this is just a Frankensteinian creation; insane asylums, secrets, homosexual persecution, unexpected pregnancies, banished loves, exile, wolf dogs, failing the Bechdel test, I could just keep listing them, but unless you've read all these books I don't think you'll believe me. I mean, what are the chances there are two different characters in two different books that were from the same area of Cornwall!?! Or that apparently every man involved in the Salem Witch Trials was in love with a witch? Or at least his descendant was. The déjà vu was just too strong for me with this book. Perhaps it will bring you comfort, for me it brought hives.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments

Labels: Alice Hoffman, Cambridge, Clue, Dark Academia, Déjà Vu, Lilith House, Magic Lessons, McCarthyism, Plagiarism, Radcliffe College, Season of the Witch, The Crooked Path, The Rules of Magic, The Witches of Cambridge, Tim Curry

Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman
Published by: Simon and Schuster
Publication Date: October 6th, 2020
Format: Hardcover, 416 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy

"Fate is what you make of it, Hannah had told her. You can make the best of it, or you can let it make the best of you." In 1664 in Essex County, England, Hannah Owens found a baby guarded by a crow in a frozen field. She took the girl in and named her Maria. The crow, obviously the young babe's familiar, was named Cadin. They spent ten years together in the woods, Hannah teaching Maria the Nameless Art. Though for Hannah witchery was a choice, for Maria it was not. She was born to it. They tended to the locals and Hannah would never turn away a woman in need. On the day Maria's mother returned begging for help, Hannah didn't turn her away. It would be her death. Rebecca was a selfish creature, working a dangerous spell, Love Potion #10, to entrap her husband. Now Rebecca wishes to rid herself of her husband and run off with Maria's father. The spell is so strong she is unable to work the magic herself to quench her husband's fire. While Hannah helps release her, the love of Thomas Lockland turns to rage. He hunts his wife down. Maria escapes with her life, Hannah does not. Maria turns to her mother, now relieved of her husband due to injuries sustained in the attack. Rebecca shows her powerful and dangerous spells before she flees with Maria's father. A father who pays for Maria to leave England by selling her to the Jansen family in Curaçao. The island off the coast of Venezuela is unlike anything she ever imagined. She is dutiful in her work and develops a reputation for helping the women of the island. Too bad she can't help herself. When she is fifteen John Hathorne comes to the island to do business with Mr. Jansen. He is her fate. She saw it in a mirror years earlier. For five days they live in a world of their own making. On the sixth day, the thirty-seven year old man is gone. When she realizes she is with child she starts to make plans to seek him out. He lives in the other Essex County, the one across the sea from where she was born. She will travel there when she is able. On March 20th, 1680, Maria gives birth to Faith and in August they book passage aboard a pirate ship bound for Rhode Island. She was only able to convince the captain, Abraham Dias, by promising to save his son, Samuel, who is dying of breakbone fever. The two forge a strong connection, but she views it as her destiny to reunite with John Hathorne. But Essex County is a big place and she's in Boston for months before she hears of him in Salem. She, Faith, and a belligerent Cadin, head off in search of this man. A woman like Maria isn't welcome in Salem. She thinks for herself and wears red boots. She doesn't know the customs or the costume appropriate for women. Yet a shocked John strings her along. He has more secrets that she knows and they will be her downfall and the rise of a curse. One that will lead any man who ever loves an Owens to be broken in body and soul. One that could destroy the happiness of future generations unless they are able to break it. Unless they make the best of fate.

That this book actually has good characters and good ideas gave me hope. That this book then squandered all that is an affront and a grievance to all those who bothered to finish it. Magic Lessons is drawn out almost beyond human endurance. The constant repetition made this feel like a first draft. Because either this book should have been tighter or split in two. The stories of Maria and her daughter Faith feel diminished by sharing the same pages. Especially once Faith turns to the left. I can't put my finger on where exactly this book went wrong, but just like Faith, it became rotten. I didn't want to pick it up again once I put it down. I just wanted to be done with it. And yet, I am a completest and therefore I trudged through this word salad to inform you about the one thing you're wondering about this book, do we learn the details of the Owens Curse? Yes. We do. Though it's far more human and stupid than you can imagine involving the follies of youth combined with rage. The fact that Maria doesn't think about her actions in the moment and even when she does assumes that in three hundred years someone is bound to figure it out, made me strongly dislike her in the end. These are her descendants, she builds a home for them, and figures that they can just stumble through the horrible legacy she left them in a moment of blind rage? Sure. Nice one Maria. But then again you were seduced and impregnated by the thirty-seven year old man when you were a fifteen-year-old servant. You don't have the best judgement. And Alice Hoffman just had to make Maria's backstory with John Hathorne that much creepier. She didn't lose the love of her life, she lost a letch who momentarily let his desires take control. But then again he also married a fourteen-year-old in real life. And given the average age of marriage back then was nineteen, that's just sick and creepy. Yet that's not the worst age-related crime in this book. Alice Hoffman has this tendency to have children that are overly precocious. I actually call this "The Charles Wallace Problem," named after the five-year-old younger brother of Meg Murry in A Wrinkle in Time. The last time I read that book I was spending the summer with my friend who has three children. At the time one of them was five. So I know full well how five-year-old children behave. And Charles Wallace is not it. Alice Hoffman extends this to all her characters when they are children. Maria can remember being left in a field right after her birth, Faith remembers full pages of her mother's grimoire that she glimpsed as a child, and this even goes back to the first book in this series when Sally was four and handling the Aunts over the phone and organizing plane tickets after her parents deaths. This isn't normal! I know that this book has magic, but this is beyond magic, it's just illogical. And yet that wasn't what broke me. Before we've only ever known that the house on Magnolia Street was in Massachusetts. This makes it very clear that it is in Salem. AKA Witch City. And yet the Owens are viewed as odd outcasts and Sally and Gillian are bullied as children for their weirdness? I understand the bullying, I don't understand the outcast status for being witches. They are literally in the city known for it. I just can't.