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Content snapshot
Flag an inaccuracy →What's in this book, at a glance — five things readers want to know before they start.
Violence
Some
The Vietnam War as background; some deaths; magical consequences
Language
Some
Moderate language; the 1960s counterculture register
Sexual Content
Some
Adult romantic relationships across the free-love era; some intimate content
Substance Use
Some
Moderate drug use in the 1960s counterculture context
Emotional Intensity
Some
The cost of love when a curse makes it dangerous, siblings who carry the same gift and pay different prices, the 1960s as a decade when everything seemed possible and cost everything
What this book is about
1960s New York. Franny, Jet, and Vincent Owens have always known they were different. Their mother has hidden their magical inheritance from them, but when they spend a summer with their aunt in Massachusetts, everything changes. As they enter adulthood through the sixties — Vietnam, free love, Greenwich Village — each sibling faces the Owens curse: that those they love will come to harm. Alice Hoffman's prequel to Practical Magic is warm, sad, and lyrical, set against the churning backdrop of the 1960s.
Notes for sensitive readers
Reader-flagged moments and themes that may affect your experience.
Vietnam War deaths in backstory
adult romantic and sexual content
drug culture of the 1960s as setting
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