This is a perfect example of a book that is three stars for me, but that I can absolutely see as a five-star book for a different reader.

My favorite elements in the earlier books were largely the atmospheric writing, the focus on magical realism vs. full fantasy and the use of the Owens family curse to theoretically reflect on fate vs. freewill. Did I want witchy books? Yes, but honestly, what KEPT me in this series was Hoffman's writing. The way she sweeps through a decade in a few sentences and then pulls you into an afternoon for several pages, her attention to the natural world as it reflects the emotional state of each character, her insight into the human need to explain why bad things happen to good people. I loved that the curse was both explicit and not, real and not, and in this book, we really depart from that. The Book of Magic is the witchiest and most magical in the series, it is the most plot-driven and it provides the most explanation and context for everything that has happened to the Owens women. For those reasons, I can absolutely see why so many readers loved this conclusion. For me, it was too straightforward. I didn't actually need closure on the curse, and by making the curse so explicitly a magical construct, the story lost a bit of its magic for me?

I also struggled with the repetition of certain descriptions, the plot summary of previous books and the inconsistencies in previous storylines.