The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna
As one of the few witches in Britain, Mika Moon knows she has to hide her magic, keep her head down, and stay away from other witches so their powers don’t mingle and draw attention. And as an orphan who lost her parents at a young age and was raised by strangers, she’s used to being alone and she follows the rules, with one exception: an online account where she posts videos pretending to be a witch. She thinks no one will take it seriously.
But someone does. An unexpected message arrives, begging her to travel to the remote and mysterious Nowhere House to teach three young witches how to control their magic. It breaks all of the rules, but Mika goes anyway, and is immediately tangled up in the lives and secrets of not only her three charges but also an absent archaeologist, a retired actor, two long-suffering caretakers, and… Jamie. The handsome and prickly librarian of Nowhere House would do anything to protect the children, and as far as he’s concerned, a stranger like Mika is a threat. An irritatingly appealing threat.
As Mika begins to find her place at Nowhere House, the thought of belonging somewhere feels like a real possibility. But magic isn’t the only danger in the world, and when peril comes knocking at their door, Mika will need to decide whether to risk everything to protect a found family she didn’t know she was looking for…
~~~~~
This felt like my first real “no-stakes” cozy fantasy. It was a book that came through on all the farm fuzzies that were promised and it had a fantastic found family trope. I’m not typically one for this type of book because I highly enjoy angst and/or high-stakes situations and I don’t love just “everyday life” kind of stories, however, add some witches and I will hop on board. I really enjoyed Mika and her story as well as the history of witches in this book. It was so different from most witch lore I’ve read and I really liked the concept of isolation for protection given what went down for witches in history. It was a fun read with some great characters, I just wish it was the tiniest bit more exciting.
We start off with Mika and her fellow witches who meet very rarely, once every three months because witches together draws too much attention. Throughout the first chapter of the book we get a nice concise explanation for why witches are isolated when suddenly, Mika gets an unexpected invitation. The warm inviting cottage on the coast, the eclectic cast of characters who work at Nowhere House, and the cute kids who are only slightly murderous made this a great experience and, like Mika, I found it hard to leave when the story was over.
My favourite parts of this book were the relationships and seeing the portrayal of healthy family dynamics. Found family is one of my favourite things so this book being almost solely focused on that aspect made me so happy. Ian’s ecstatic if not somewhat flawed way of expressing his love, Ken’s steadiness, Jamie’s protectiveness, Lucie’s directness, but the best of all was the dynamic of the girls. Their sibling dynamic was so real, the fighting, the pranking, and all the trouble yet at the end of the day still fiercely protective of one another.
I love a good character driven book and this one had some great characters, however I feel like it was more relationship driven while somehow lacking to delve too deep into characterization. I loved Jamie and Mika, but even reading from their points of view and hearing their backstories, I felt like I only knew them on the surface level. We get told a lot about them but the most insight we see into their actual personalities is through the very little banter we get between the two. It made for the love story to be a little bit unbelievable as a lot of the “falling” happened off page. I also feel like there could have been a lot more expansion into Mika’s relationship with Altamira, Terracotta, and Rosetta. We seen her as an instructor and got some cute moments between her and the girls but besides being TOLD that the girls grew to care about her, we don’t see it all that much and it made the “belonging” feel a little forced as well.
Overall, a great story if you’re needing a comforting read with low stakes and some magic. This book did make me realize that I crave angst more than I had thought but I still enjoyed reading this. 3.75 stars for me on this one, it just needed a little more character depth for me.