Review: The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

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 begins to feel like a real possibility. But magic isn’t the only danger in the world, and when a threat 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…. 

• Title: The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches
• Author:  Sangu Mandanna
• Publisher: Berkley
• Publication Date: August 23, 2022
• Genre: Fantasy, Romance 
• Targeted Age Range: Adult
• Content Warnings: death, abandonment, estranged parents, sibling abuse, memory loss
• Rating: ★★★★★

There are a few people in this world whose opinions I trust implicitly, but Em at adaptationbrain and Taylor from shorelinepages are two of them — if they both like a book, I know I’ll also absolutely adore it. Both of them have been telling me to read The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches for the longest time, and I finally caved and picked it up this week. 

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches is a love letter to finding your place in the world, to recognizing your own powers, being kind rather than being nice, healing from your past traumas, and finding your own community. It is, in my opinion, what The House in the Cerulean Sea sets out to do and fails at — If you’d like to know more about my thoughts on that book, click here. 

In the world of The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, we’re told that it’s unsafe for witches to be together — their powers can be harder to control that way, and they can draw unwanted attention to themselves. As an orphan raised by strangers, Mika is no stranger to being alone, and normally follows all the rules, except for one instance: her online videos where she’s masquerading as a “witch”. Her online persona is all harmless fun, really — it’s just to combat her loneliness and a space for Mika to talk about something so dear to her heart — until someone notices her videos. When Mika receives a mysterious message asking her to travel to Nowhere House to teach three young witches to control their magic, she decides to go, despite the fact that it’d break all the rules. There, she’s thrown for a loop when she meets three little witches, Rosetta, Altamira and Terracotta, a retired actor (Ian), a housekeeper (Lucie), a gardener (Ken),  and the grumpiest librarian of all time — Jamie Kelly — who would do anything to protect the witches. As Mika settles in at Nowhere House, she realizes that there’s more than what meets the eye, and has to decide if her new family is worth the risk. 

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches at its very core contains all the ingredients for a book I know will be an instant favorite: cozy fantasy, comforting vibes, found family, lovable characters, and grumpy/sunshine romance. I sometimes struggle with reading high fantasy, but there’s just something that hits different about cozy fantasy. There isn’t a lot of worldbuilding, and The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches feels like something out of a cottagecore dream. Sangu Mandanna’s writing style was also so easily digestible and made it incredibly easy for me to picture everything that was going on. I felt like I had left the real world and was sitting at Nowhere House the entire time I was reading it. 

I’m a sucker for found family stories, and The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches is one of the better found family stories I’ve read recently. Every character is so well-fleshed out, with their own fears and desires, and this book is genuinely just so wholesome. You could really tell how much they all cared for one another, and the lengths they would go to to protect the other residents of Nowhere House. 

Mika is quite literally the personification of You’re On Your Own Kid by Taylor Swift. Mika’s journey to finding a home for herself, as well as a calling, was one of my favorite bits of this book. I found her to be incredibly relatable, and wanted to just give her the biggest hug at times. And of course, I also adored the love interest — Jamie. I love the grumpy sunshine trope, and it folds perfectly into the story. Jamie’s overprotectiveness of the three witches, saddled with his own past traumas, only added to the story. Mika and Jamie both learn to come to terms with their own pasts and to move past their scars. While I do think that Mika and Jamie would’ve gotten there eventually, it’s obvious how much they’ve helped each other heal. 

Overall, I absolutely adored The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, and could not recommend it more highly. It’s the perfect cozy read, and undoubtedly magical. 

Links for The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches: Goodreads | TheStorygraph | Bookshop | IndieBound