Despite loving the film Practical Magic, I’ve never actually read a book by Alice Hoffman - slightly shamefaced, as I absolutely loved this.

Young Ivy Jacob finds herself pregnant and runs away to The Community, where her daughter is raised.

Mia rebels against the strict rules and falls in love with the magic of reading….

It’s a book that I thought I had the measure of, and then it went somewhere entirely leftfield! 

A book about women, their struggles against the patriarchy, about agency and autonomy. The parallels in the book between what is happening now in parts of America with the overturning of Roe vs Wade and the treatment of women throughout history and in the present in The Community are evident and made me shudder. 

A story that engaged me from the off, with brilliant strong, female characters and a book that I am pretty sure I could read again and see things I missed the first read round.