Yes, these are adult characters (31/36), and there is a tiny bit of steam, but it’s so soft, cozy, and found family-oriented that the vibe reads a lot younger. This is the first adult romance by the author, and that could explain why it had such YA vibes. I am so charmed.Įnter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.I’ll be generous with my rating, because this wasn’t a good fit for me, but it’ll be just the kind of soft, magical romance that some readers are looking for.

I’d recommend this to anyone – even kids if you’re ready to expose them to sex! – and am anxious to see more from Mandanna. Especially with its realistic, fully-formed child characters, it feels like it wants to be friendly to young adults (such positive messages!), and I was going to classify it as such for nearly 300 pages – at which point there occurred a pretty heavy sex scene, so keep that in mind. Central characters show a nice diversity in age, ethnicity and sexuality. With themes involving outsiderness and the search for belonging, the risks of relating to other people, built families, passion for one’s calling, and every kind of love, it’s a beautiful, affirming study in humanity. The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches is a lovely book.

She is just beginning to find the kind of kinship she feared would never be an option for someone like her – someone different – when it turns out there are still more layers of secrets than she’d realized. Nowhere House turns out to be magical in many ways for Mika, though. Three little witches in one space should be very dangerous indeed, especially because (like young skunks!) they’re not yet in full control of their powers. Mika struggles to balance her own strong desire for companionship, community, even family, and her passion for her work, with her grudging respect for Primrose’s Rules. So she’s alarmed to be caught out by a strange offer to tutor three young witches at a mysterious estate called Nowhere House. As a relief valve for her enthusiasm for witchiness, she releases videos on her YouTube channel in which she brews potions and casts spells: it’s not meant to be taken seriously, of course. Primrose is the keeper of the Rules for witches: in a nutshell, witches live in secret and in minimal contact with one another, because witches together mean too much magical dangerously combining in small spaces. She was raised by a quickly-turning-over series of tutors and nannies, who were in turn employed by an elder witch named Primrose. In the opening pages we meet Mika Moon, a young Indian-born witch living in modern-day England. I no longer remember where I got this recommendation, but it was a *great* one.

The very secret society of witches