#168 Not-a-book-review: The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches
Stardust, Spells, and the Magic of Belonging
Dearest,
Have you ever come across a book that feels like a soft scraping of moonlight on your tongue?
A book like liquid warmth, where each word is a gentle sip of comfort?
In my pursuit to read books that offer earth shattering wisdom, I have been missing out on those whose pages stick with the mozzarella kindness they carry within.
Each line a whisper, each paragraph a gentle touch, each chapter a subtle breath against your inner solitary landscape.
One such cozy read is The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches.
The book follows Mika Moon, a witch of Indian origin, living in Britain.
Like most other witches under the guardianship of Primrose the “oldest, most powerful, and most bossy” witch matriarch, Mika has been raised to follow three rules:
to hide her magic
to not stand out, and
to not be in the company of other witches because “too much magic in one place attracts attention… and …alone is how we survive”.
So, for most of her life, Mika has been alone and she doesn’t really mind it.
But when a peculiar invitation from Nowhere House with the opening words “WITCH WANTED” lands in her inbox, it stirs something long buried, a reminder that just because you’re used to being alone doesn’t mean you’re meant to stay that way.
Mika is invited to Nowhere House to be a live-in tutor to three young witches — Rosetta (10), Terracotta (8), and Altamira (7). She’s been tasked to teach the girls how to manage their mischief (nod to Rowling!) by their caretakers - a quilt of strange. Mika describes each of them as:
Ian: An old, white man who’s a hurricane in fluffy slippers and a scarf the alarming shade of flamingo pink (I kept imagining an older Cam from Modern Family)
Ken: A 70-something, Japanese man with a smile so warm that it’s impossible not to smile back (also Ian’s partner)
Jamie: A 30-something, Irish hottie with a rough voice, that sounds like it has been sandpapered, and
Lucie: The sweet housekeeper in her fifties with pink cheeks and a face almost always wreathed in a smile
Together all these weirdos come in like a wrecking ball into Mika Moon’s life, shattering the spell of isolation she’s carefully cast around her heart and her life.
How? Well, that’s for you to read!
Let me just say this much: This book is about not hiding the starsprinkle you carry within you, but letting it dance like gold dust so you can attract your found family. It is about mustering the courage to always say yes to love, though each time it gets more difficult to trust it. It is about not being scared of your magic, but befriending it because all it’s ever wanted is to play alongside you.
In the book, Mika who excels at potion-making, brews a potion that she names Harmony. It is made from two sea holly petals, delicate as remembered dreams, dancing with a single drop of their own sap; half a teaspoon of crushed pearl dissolved like ancient secrets, and one drop of moonlight captured in liquid form.
The potion is meant to smooth the jagged edges of raw feelings.
I think Sangu Mandanna, the writer, has through this book gifted us that potion. 🪄🧙🏻♀️
Only complaint (what is life without a little dissatisfaction): Nowhere House as a living character would transform the narrative from a mere setting to an active participant in the story.
The author could have imagined the house as a sentient being with its own desires, memories, and emotional landscape. Nowhere House remembers. Its foundations are deep wells of magical history, each floorboard a memory, each window a forgotten spell. The walls don't just contain the witches - they observe, they learn, they participate. Rooms expand and contract with the emotional temperatures of its inhabitants, hallways twist like thoughts not yet fully formed, staircases that lead to places that existed only moments ago, then vanish.
May be that is for me to write, if I ever write a book? (Need a potion for that!)
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Recently read this book, and loved it! So glad to have come across your review 🌼