#sangu mandanna

[acotars]

Read in 2023:

Over the years, Mika had embraced all the things that made her different and had discovered that she liked herself very much. But what was that worth without human connection? How was it possible to live, truly live, without the companionship of other people, without a family formed in any of the thousands of ways families could be formed?

THE VERY SECRET SOCIETY OF IRREGULAR WITCHES by Sangu Mandanna

[cosettepontmercys]

get to know me meme ♡ favorite books → the very secret society of irregular witches by sangu mandanna

“I can’t transform the world, Jamie. The world’s too big and too messy and too stubborn.” “Who said anything about transforming the world?” He shrugged. “What about just making it a little better? And then a little better? And then a little more, until, one day, maybe long after we’re gone, it has transformed?”

[themelodyofspring]

JOMP Book Photo Challenge

October 18, 2023 - Witches

[b-oredzoi]

Books I Read in 2023: The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna

That was some excellent Mary Poppins shit right there.

[shesnake]

shiv roy coded

[fearthefluff]

Fantasy Romance Recommendations Pt.2

This is list number 2 and it will be focusing on Urban Fantasy and Contemporary romance with fantasy elements. For more traditional Fantasy recs, check list 1!  Maybe it will help someone somewhere. XD ***Some of the books listed here are not Romance novels officially but all have romance and have HFN or HEA endings Urban Fantasy Romance (Paranormal Romance) 

Hidden Legacy Series by Ilona Andrews 2 Trilogies Nevada Baylor is a Truthseeker; she is able to tell when people lie. When her family's detective agency is tasked with apprehending a powerful fire wielding psychopath, it puts them on the path of collision with the powerful magical elite who rules Houston. Guildcodex Series by Annette Marie 4 Series. Spellbound, Demonized, Unveiled and Wraped. When feisty redhead Tori landed a job at a sketchy pub, she had no idea she'd just joined a magic guild. And the three guys she drenched with a margarita during her first shift? Yeah, they were mages. She's about to get a crash course in the world of magic and mythics. Mercernary Librarians Trilogy by Kit Rocha Meet the Mercenary Librarians: a trio of information brokers who join forces with a squad of elite super-soldiers to use their knowledge to help the hopeless in a dystopian post-apocalyptic United States ruled by a corporate autocracy. Psy-Changeling Series by Nalini Singh A world shared by Changeling, a race of animal shifters , the Psy, a race of powerful psychic who live without emotions and Humans. Tension between the 3 races are rising. The Firebrand Series by Helen Harper Emma, an aspiring detective, is placed with the Supernatural Squad in London. Soon she is brutally murdered by an unknown assailant,  wakes up twelve hours later in the morgue – and is very much alive. Contemporary Romance with Fantasy Elements The Dead Romantic by Ashley Poston Florence Day is the ghostwriter for one of the most prolific romance authors in the industry, and she has a problem... she no longer believes in love. Then her new editor shows up at her front door as a ghost. Romance is most certainly dead... but so is her new editor, and his unfinished business will have her second-guessing everything she’s ever known about love stories. The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna A warm and uplifting novel about an isolated witch whose opportunity to embrace a quirky new family--and a new love--changes the course of her life. A Stitch in Time by Kelley Armstrong Thorne Manor has always been haunted...and it has always haunted Bronwyn Dale. As a young girl, Bronwyn could pass through a time slip in her great-aunt’s house, where she visited William Thorne, a boy her own age, born two centuries earlier.

[bibliophilecats]

Currently reading: The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna

[ninelivesart]

Part 28 of Drawing My Reads was A Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna

[morningcupofcoffee]

One thing i noticed over the years is that some people are nice and some people are kind.( … ) Niceness is good manners, and stopping to give someone direction, and smiling at the overworked cashier at the supermarket. These are all good things, but they have nothing to with what‘s underneath. Niceness is all about what we do when other people are looking. Kindness, on the other hand, runs deep. Kindness is what happens when no one‘s looking.

- sangu mandanna, the very secret society of irregular witches

[bigdreamsandwildthings]

Review: The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches (Sangu Mandanna)

Rating: ★★★★★/5

“But to allow herself to be loved? That was so much harder. That required bravery and trust and the vanquishing of the monsters that lived under the bed. Jamie had said, rightly, that he couldn’t step off the ledge for her. Only she could do that. Could she? Could she go to the very edge of that ledge and, even knowing there was always a chance that she would fall, still jump?” The grumpy/sunshine found family witchy book of my dreams. Mika Moon is a witch, part of what she calls the Very Secret Society of Witches in Britain. There are only a few of them, because, according to Primrose, leader of their little group, solitude keeps them safe. Mika is desperate for community though, and she creates witchy videos for the Internet as a way to put herself out there as a witch - without actually showing her true witchy identity. But now, Mika has received a mysterious note: a little family in the middle of British nowhere invites her to come and live with them, to teach their adopted girls what being a witch is all about. And if she accepts, Mika may just find out what true belonging and love really mean while she’s at it. I'm such a sucker for a sweet NA romance these days. This one is so much more than a romance - it's about finding family, accepting yourself, and realizing that life is worth living and letting people in. And yes, there is a grumpy/sunshine romance on top, but it really is just as important as every other wonderful aspect here. I absolutely ADORED Mika Moon. She's so sweet and the way she chooses to be happy at every turn is an inspiration. She's also hilarious and real and swears like a sailor, and I just loved her. Truly loved her. The rest of the cast are just as wonderful, from loud, boisterous Ian to tempestuous Terracotta to soft and sweet Rosetta to prickly-with-a-heart-of-gold Jamie. Literally everyone had their own feel to them, their own well-developed personality. I fell in love immediately and just continued falling through the book. I'm finding that I'm loving the softer books recently. This is one where the plot feels fairly low stakes, and even when those stakes get higher, it doesn't ever feel like mortal peril. The way things shake out, you just know they have to be okay for our little family, and I loved the certainty of that. My heart softened on page one, and that didn't backfire; this book is a hug, soft and warm and lovely and cozy. I need more of these kinds of stories in my life. It's like someone crawled into my brain and took out exactly what I wanted to read about and said "here you go, enjoy". I recommend reading this one with a warm blanket, a cuddly animal, and a hot cup of tea. It's a straight shot of serotonin, and I loved it immensely.

[wormwoodandhoney]

some books read in 2022: the very secret society of irregular witches by sangu mandanna

An absent archaeologist, a housekeeper, a librarian, a gardener, a retired actor, and three unlikely witches. As backstories went, it was one of the weirdest Mika had ever heard.

[mimisreadingnook]

current read: the very secret society of irregular witches 🔮

so far its a bit boring to be honest, but the atmosphere is cozy and the stakes are low! im gonna keep reading and hopefully it'll get more interesting later on.

[theblurbwitchproject]

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna

Published: August 23, 2022 Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

The Author

Sangu Mandanna writes books about magical sketchbooks, romantic witches, and characters who discover they’re a lot stronger than they think they are. She was four years old when an elephant chased her down a forest road and she decided to write her first story about it. Seventeen years and many, many manuscripts later, she signed her first book deal. Sangu now lives in Norwich, in the east of England, with her husband and kids.

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The Story 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. 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 the handsome and prickly librarian of Nowhere House, Jamie.

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The Vibe: cosy, found family, (one-sided) enemies to lovers, romance, eccentric characters, grumpy/sunshine pairing, diverse cast, LGBTQ+ characters

The Style: standalone, cosy romance, easy-going prose, wholesome, whimsical

Trigger Warnings: discussion of past homophobia, child abuse, abandonment issues, sex

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The Review

You know what? I loved this book.

I’m not a big reader of romance, and am often turned off by cutesy sounding plots, but I am so glad I gave this a go. I was in a pretty bad reading slump, just not really enjoying anything I picked up, but this sweet little novel really pulled me out of that funk. I’ve seen negative reviews of The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches calling it too “twee” but seriously... the title alone tells you twee is what you’re getting, let alone the protagonist being named Mika Moon. I picked up this book wanting twee, and it was lovingly presented by Mandanna.

As the blurb explains, the plot centres on Mika, an Indian born witch in her early-thirties who only gets to interact with other witches at pre-decided meetings once every three months. These meetings are run by Primrose, the powerful witch and stickler for the rules who raised Mika. The rest of the time the witches avoid each other so as not to draw the public’s attention to their power. When Mika is invited to care for three young witches at Nowhere House, who, going completely against the rules, live under one roof as adopted sisters, she encounters something that she has never had but desperately wants; a family. Now, I’m a sucker for a good found-family trope, and this book really delivers on that front.

“Over the years, Mika had embraced all the things that made her different and had discovered that she liked herself very much. But what was that worth without human connection? How was it possible to live, truly live, without the companionship of other people, without a family formed in any of the thousands of ways families could be formed?”

The writing style is very easy-going, but where Mandanna shines is creating unique and diverse characters, including: Ian, an elder gay “luvvie”-type English theatre actor who knits rainbow scarves; Ken, his Japanese, professional gardener husband; Lucie, the round-cheeked and loving housekeeper; and Jamie, the scowling but handsome Irish librarian. And that’s just the adults of Nowhere House; the three young witches are also fantastic: there’s Rosetta who is 10, black, friendly and an avid reader; Terracotta, 8, Vietnamese, rebellious and  fierecly protective of her family, and Altamira, 7, Palestinian, hilarious, and maybe my favourite character in the entire book. And lets not forget Circe, the friendly golden labrador.

One of the outstanding aspects of this story was the examination of intersectionality among the different characters. Each of the witches at Nowhere House not only have magical powers, but are people of colour living in England; “They were witches, they weren’t white, and they’d been born far away. Much as they might all wish otherwise, there would always be people who would question whether they were British enough, normal enough, anything enough.” I also admired the inclusion of Ian and Ken’s desire to protect the young girls, having their own experiences living on the fringes of society. It’s all so thoughtful. And the characters are all so lovely, even cranky Jamie who  has “the soul of a cantankerous old man who yells at little kids to get off his lawn”, but in actuality likes kids more than he does most adults. The found family aspect feels so solid in this book; they feel like they have years of history. Nowhere House also feels super cosy and real- I want to move in like yesterday.

“It’s not always enough to go looking for the place we belong,” Jamie said, his eyes on the house ahead. “Sometimes we need to make that place.”

As I said earlier, I’m not massive on the romance genre, but I did enjoy the grumpy/sunshine pairing in this story, it has a good slow-burn progression that felt natural. And it gets a little spicy too, just fyi. I did enjoy that there was reasoning behind Jamies’ attitude; he’s not just a crank for no reason. Like Terracotta, he is fiercly protective of his family unit and puts their safety before anything else.

There is a good level of new witch-lore in this story, from witches going into a state of hibernation if they get seriously injured while their body repairs itself, to the methods Mika uses to harvest ingredients for her potions. The only thing I wanted more of was the inclusion of the lessons Mika delivers to the girls. They’re all so entertaining, especially Altamira, who is a perfectly written child who drops some hilarious swear words even though she’s only seven. And her logic of “I’ll stop when Ian and Jamie do” is totally fair in my book. Seeing more of their growth and development as young witches would have been great, particularly as that was the reason behind Mika’s moving to Nowhere House to begin with.

“The thing is, being a witch is extraordinary,” she said. “It might seem sometimes that all we are is odd and different, but the truth is, we’re amazing. We’re part of the earth below us and the sky above us. Our veins echo the patterns of rivers and roots. There’s sunlight and moonlight in our bones.”

This book was just so nice. I desperately want a sequel or five. There are plenty of options for world building, and I want more of Rosetta, Terracotta and Altamira learning to control their powers. Sangu, if you’re reading- pretty please expand this lovely universe? It was a lovely escape from reality that I will probably return to in the future.

Rating: 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌗 

[Goodreads]

[bookishbethanyerin]

• review: the very secret society of irregular witches •

If you are in the mood for something warm and cozy that will make you laugh out loud and swoon and kick your feet, then Sangu Mandanna’s The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches will absolutely do the trick.

The story follows Mika Moon, a witch who lives a solitary life and wishes she were able to share her craft with others. After receiving a message asking her to consider a job teaching witchcraft to three young witches so that they have a grip on their magic before Solstice, she accepts and moves into the home of a wealthy archaeologist who is never around, but has adopted these three girls and has a lovely staff to care for them – including Jamie, a grumpy teacher who basically lives in the library and looks hot in sweaters and can quote Jane Austen.

I feel like saying I was completely charmed by this story is an understatement – but it is so charming and the writing is wonderful and the slow-burning love story here crackles in the best way. I absolutely adored this – and though it’s witchy, I’d argue the Solstice angle makes it a wonderful holiday read.

5🌟

1.75🌶️

[libraryleopard]

Okay, so I'm reading The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna and I need to know if anyone else has had the same issues as me because I'm fifty pages from the end and I'm kind of losing my mind at how this apparently cozy fantasy novel keeps dropping in things that to me read as incredibly fucked up without really unpacking them

So the first thing that an established part of this world-building is that due to a curse, all witches are orphans because their biological parents will always die shortly after they're born. Which is honestly, like, something that could be in a horror novel and not a fluffy contemporary fantasy novel, but it's meant to explain that the main character, Mika, is an orphan who didn't have a family growing up. But then the novel adds in the fact that the protagonist's grandmother and and mother where both witches who didn't want to have children because of this but did anyway. There's a conversation Mika has with her childhood guardian, Primrose, where Primrose says "Neither your mother nor mother or grandmother ever planned to have children. I think they would have liked to if it hadn't been for the spell, but they did not have the luxury of choosing in the end." Which has also sorts of fucked-up implications to me–rape? violation of bodily autonomy? forced pregnancy?–but not does seem to be a thing that the novel is going to revisit or explore. And also there's no mention of Mika, say, being on birth control to avoid having a witch daughter and dying prematurely even though she has a spell to ease period cramps????

The second thing is that Mika, who is Indian and was raised in England by a witch white after her mother died, is hired to be a nanny for three young witch orphans, Altamira, Rosetta, and Terracotta, who are Black, Palestinian, and Vietnamese, respectively. After their parents died thanks to the witch-curse, the three girls were taken in by a white British archaeologist witch, Lillian, and renamed after notable archaeological discovers. There's, like, one mention of the current guardians of the three girls hoping that Mika could be kind of a role model for them since she's an older woman of color, but I find the fact that a white British lady took in three orphans of color, gave them these weird twee names instead of keeping the names they presumably already had, and is raising them with no connection to their birth cultures weirdly…colonialist? But the main worries of the novel seems to be just getting the girls to control their magic so they don't have to live in isolation. Sangu Mandanna is British Indian so she's coming to this with a different perspective than me (white American), but it just seems weird to me!! Like, there's a whole sequence of the adults preparing for Winter Solstice celebrations and I was just like damn none of these guardians seems to care about keeping the girls in their care in contact with the cultures of their birth families?

Also, the love interest has a really disturbing backstory where his older brothers were horrifically abusive to him after the death of their father (like, he recounts that they would whip him with his father's belt and say it was like he was being beaten by his father) and it's literally resolved in one off-page confrontation with the brothers where he decides they aren't as scary as they were when they were kids.

I just!! don't get!!!! why a book that's marketed as sweet and cozy keeps including these things that seemly massively fucked up and not unpacking them at all. I like fluffy books and I like romance novels (and I think light-hearted novels can still unpack serious topics–like I recently read Donut Fall in Love by Jackie Lau and it's primarily a sweet romance but also features characters dealing with the grief of losing a parent in a way that felt tonally fitting), but the dissonance of these things being included and not really unpacked in what's supposed to be a feel-good read is so weird to me!!!

And I really thought that the witch curse would end up being a primarily problem characters have to face at the end (it's established as being a protection spell that went wrong and became a curse, causing witches to lead lives isolated from each other), but it seems like it won't be.

Anyway, I'm almost done and I don't know if I'm overthinking things but it's driving me batty.

[chronicallyread]

"but one thing I've noticed over the years is that some people are nice and some people are kind. Does that make sense? Niceness is good manners, and stopping to give someone directions, and smiling at the overworked cashier at the supermarket. These are all good things, but they have nothing to do with what's underneath. Niceness is all about what we do when other people are looking. Kindness on the other hand, runs deep. Kindness happens when no one is looking." The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches Sangu Mandanna