As a huge fan of the movie this book was such a dissapointment, I had no idea the movie took so many liberties with the plot. I read the prequel "The rules of magic" first, loved it and thought it would have the same vibe but I was painfully mistaken,  I feel like the movie has more similarities in essence with that book. To me it felt like there was nothing magical about this story, it's so plain and the writing... ugh

Sally and Gillian don't actually have any conscience of magic at all and the aunts barely have a presence. There are also a few inconsistencies in the plot from one book to the other that I found so weird and really took me out of the story, as if I was reading two different series.

It's not a bad story but I do feel it lacks any "practical magic" and it saddens me, I wasn't expecting it to be exactly like the movie but I thought it would at least be similar to the prequel and even the writing style is completely different.

It was a pretty hard read for me, over descriptive of scenes and moods, and with hardly any dialogue. I don't think I'm even going to try to read the 2 books left in the series but if I dare to  my expectations  have definitely been lowered.