My fascination for stories about witches didn’t begin, as it did for many, with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or The Wizard of Oz. My fascination began with a story I read for the first time in 1984, The Changeover by Margaret Mahy. This tale of a young girl who found herself in a difficult position and in need of help from a family she knew to be witches because she could sense it, had me hooked.
Fast forward almost 40 years (scary realisation) and as soon as I saw the title and then read the blurb for this book, I just knew The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches was going to be a book that was written for people like me.
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…
I love the world that Mandanna has created in The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, it’s the world we all know, with the -isms, the bigotry, the fear of differences, and on top of that has been added a layer of shimmering gold and mystery. The issues that the characters experience are ones that the reader will likely be familiar with, even if they don’t experience them personally, but there is also the added fear of being discovered, of being tormented and tortured purely because of the ability they were born with that makes them different.
Mika, our main protagonist grew up motherless, a curse that all witches face. Because of this, she was raised by a series of nannies and tutors. Unfortunately, when they discovered her talents they used her for them, until the point where her disinterested guardian, Primrose, discovered the truth and wiped their memories. Therefore, Mika has gone through her life alone, somewhat envious of the bonds others have been able to make and wishing that she could truly be herself and find people who accepted her.
And that’s where this story really begins. Mika is a loner, a nomad who rarely settles anywhere for more than a few months, partly because of her fear of being discovered. But when she gets an unusual invitation from Nowhere House in Norfolk, she is curious enough to want to find out what it is they need from her.
The collection of people at Nowhere House is not only interesting but incredibly different, yet they seem to balance each other out. We have Ian a very exuberant and eager older man who comes across as incredibly genuine, and then we have his partner, Ken who does his best to keep Ian and his eagerness under control. There’s Lucie, who comes across as very sensible but has this very motherly vibe about her and gruff Jamie, who we later discover has many facets, the least of which is the fact that he is incredibly attractive.
The adults are interesting, but the real reason Mika has been asked to visit this house that glimmers with magic is due to three young girls, Terracotta, Rosetta and Altamira. They’re no ordinary, precocious and sometimes bloodthirsty children, they’re witches and they need help to get their magic under control. They need to learn not to set things on fire, to know how to get down when they start levitating, how to ensure a burst of temper does not lead to an explosion.
And for some reason, their adult guardians think that Mika is the person for the job.
I really enjoyed this book, I liked that it wasn’t about immediate acceptance. Everyone had to learn about trust and learn to trust that they weren’t going to hurt each other. Though Mika was immediately attracted to Jamie, she was reticent, unwilling to open herself up, and give him the ability to hurt her.
Every character in this book has a past that is revealed at the right time, and it doesn’t only relate to magic, which gives the characters and the story further depth. There is a twist that I never saw coming, and I am really glad I didn’t, because it was a pleasant and unexpected surprise.
But most of all I enjoyed the way that none of the characters actually changed, their core personality traits remained the same though they grew as people.
The book showed that letting people in doesn’t have to make you different, just makes you a better version of the person you are (of course, if you are a ‘good’ person to begin with).
Probably the most important message in this book is that there are nice people and there are kind people, and you don’t have to be one to be the other, but being kind is better.
Pros
- A natural slow-burn romance is important to the story but it’s not the centre of everything
- All the characters feel real despite some of the ‘less than real’ (possibly) powers they have
- The children in the book aren’t written to feel superfluous to the story, each has a different personality and adds to the story
Cons
- I would have loved to have read the run-up to the epilogue
