Unlike their home in Manhattan, there are no rules at Aunt Isabelle’s, and the children are allowed to do as they please. The summer Franny turns 17, the siblings travel to Massachusetts to spend vacation with their tenacious Aunt Isabelle. Their mother knows too, and in turn, instills a number of rules on the children – the number one being to never fall in love. Vincent, the charming rebel, is the youngest, and from the time he’s born, knows exactly how to work his magic.

Bridget, or “Jet,” is next – she’s quietly beautiful and powerfully clairvoyant. Franny is the oldest – she’s pragmatic and stubborn, reliant solely on logic. Set in the 1960s, The Rules of Magic tells the story of Franny, Jet, and Vincent Owens, three young witches growing up on the Upper East Side. This book actually came as a suggestion for my book club and, since I’d heard such fantastic reviews about Practical Magic, I was eager to read it. Unlike what feels like the entire literary community, I had not read Practical Magic prior to reading this – I hadn’t even seen the movie. The two beautiful sisters will grow up to be the revered, and sometimes feared, aunts in Practical Magic, while Vincent, their beloved brother, will leave an unexpected legacy. The Owens children cannot escape love even if they try, just as they cannot escape the pains of the human heart. Back in New York City, each begins a risky journey as they try to escape the family curse. But when her children visit their Aunt Isabelle, in the small Massachusetts town where the Owens family has been blamed for everything that has ever gone wrong, they uncover family secrets and begin to understand the truth of who they are. And most importantly, never, ever, fall in love.

Difficult Franny, with skin as pale as milk and blood red hair, shy and beautiful Jet, who can read other people’s thoughts, and charismatic Vincent, who began looking for trouble on the day he could walk.įrom the start, Susanna sets down rules for her children: No walking in the moonlight, no red shoes, no wearing black, no cats, no crows, no candles, no books about magic.

Hundreds of years later, in New York City at the cusp of the sixties, when the whole world is about to change, Susanna Owens knows that her three children are dangerously unique. For the Owens family, love is a curse that began in 1620, when Maria Owens was charged with witchery for loving the wrong man.

The rules of magic hoffman