I adored this narrative! It weaves together elements of witches, dramatic tension, love, a newfound sense of family, and, naturally, enchantment. I particularly cherished the evolving connections between characters like Mika, the group of girls, Ian, Ken, Lucie, and most notably, the cantankerous Jamie. At its core, this tale revolves around a woman who has lived a solitary existence for years, discovering a place where she can truly belong and embrace her authentic self.

Thank you to @netgalley and @berkleypub for my e-arc copy in exchange for my honest review.

This book is the perfect fall, cozy witchy fantasy that should be on everyone’s fall TBRs for years to come.

This book is Practical Magic meets The House in the Cerulean Sea. I absolutely fell in love with the girls, Terracotta, Rosetta, and Altamira. I wanted to just pick them each up and give them a big squeeze.

Normally I don’t enjoy when an author sprinkles in real life like social media but I actually enjoyed it here. Bringing up TikTok and the sub community of Witch Tok was so fun to see.

And we can’t forget to mention the romance which is a deliectble slow burn and is so worth the wait.

I recommend this book to any reader looking for a cozy fall read with some magic.

Rating 4.5 stars

“This is either going to be the miracle you hoped for or it’s going to be an absolute fucking disaster.”
The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna is heartwarming, fun, and full of witchy hijinks that truly need to be read to be appreciated. Mika Moon is a witch who knows she needs to keep her magic a secret, but just can’t seem to help herself when it comes to showing off on social media. Surely harmless tricks and spells can be explained by the power of editing, right?

Wrong. When she gets a desperate message and a cry for help, Mike is intrigued, and so is her magic. Once she arrives at the house to meet with the person who sent the message, Mika realizes Nowhere House is the home to not just one witch, but three young witches who are in dire need of tutelage. So begins Mika slow transformation from solitary witch to one whose home lies with a group of people who have found themselves bound together in raising three orphaned witches.

Her eyes very round, seven-year-old Altamira said, with perfect gravity, “That was some excellent Mary Poppins shit right there.”
I was instantly charmed by The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches. First, by the title. Can you blame me? I quickly fell under the spell of Sangu Mandanna’s storytelling too. The snark of the three girls, Rosetta, Altamira, and Terracotta brought me to tears from laughing so hard multiple times. And it was the endearing and all-encompassing love between Ken and Ian that could warm the cockles of any frozen heart. But truly, it was Jamie and Mika’s dance of a romance that won me over.

As Mika’s time with the young witches winds down, her romance with Jamie sparks to life. There’s more to the story than just romance. I loved the plot with Rosetta, Altamira and Terracotta, as well as the plot that stems from the secrecy of the witches around the world. It is the plot line of secrecy and how detrimental it is to young witches that becomes the overarching theme of the story that ties together so wonderfully in the end, that I quickly gobbled up the pages until I was finished with this perfectly lovely story.

It’s a leap of faith to love people and let yourself be loved. It’s closing your eyes, stepping off a ledge into nothing, and trusting that you’ll fly rather than fall.
If you haven’t yet discovered the magic of The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches then you’re in for one magical treat. This wonderful story can be enjoyed all year long, but is a perfect read as Autumn bleeds into Winter. Sangu Mandanna has written a story that encompasses the charm of the winter season in Northern England and honestly will make you yearn for your own holiday traditions. Full of perfectly wonderful witchiness, and oodles of charm, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches should be at the tippy top of your must-read list.

If you are tired of 'hot girl summer' and ready for all things witchy, coziness and lattes, this book is for you. This is about Mika, one of the many witches in present-day world who seeks family above all, but is not ready for the cost it comes with. Until the day that she is.

When witch Mika receives a job offer at Nowhere House, she finds herself teaching three young witches how to control their magic. Nowhere House is also home to an absent archeaologist, a retired actor, two caretakers…and Jamie.

This was a “serious” book. It was listed as a romance - and there is one between Mika and Jamie - but it felt more women’s fiction (witch’s fiction) to me. I think Mika’s journey of self discovery was as important as the romance. I thought the audiobook was good!

I loved this story! It has witches, drama, love, a found family, and of course magic! Loved the growing relationship between Mika, the girls, Ian and Ken, Lucie and especially the curmudgeon Jamie. This is a tale about a woman whose been alone all her life, finding a place to fit in and be herself.

I loved everything about this! The characters were immediately likable. Seeing this odd assembly of people who were seemingly thrown together at random finding love and family in each other was so heartwarming. There was so much about Mika’s journey that hit me hard and brought actual tears to my eyes (as someone who rarely cries while reading). I love how this story had me laughing, crying, and feeling enchanted by this small but mighty found family. I highly recommend if you’re in the mood for light cozy fantasy that doesn’t feel silly or shallow.

Spice Level: R (lead up is descriptive and steamy but not graphically detailed)

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me free access to the advanced digital copy of this book.

This was a very cute grumpy/sunshine, found family trusting that you’re enough romance. The family was bats**t insane and I loved it. The romance was very cute, and I loved the twist that happened towards the end.

The problem with this novel being so similar in both plot and setting to "The House in the Cerulean Sea" is that it is very challenging to avoid comparison, and "The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches" pales in comparison.

I had very little sense of chemistry or relationship development between Mika and Jamie. We are told a few times that they have simmering feelings for each other, but there is little evidence as to why that would be the case. Their eventual hookup really felt like a surprise. The romance storyline felt almost out of place in a story that otherwise focuses on child-like wonder and imagination.

Beyond that, the plot got more ridiculous as the story went on and any sort of conflict was managed a little too conveniently. There were some sweet moments between Mika and the young witches, but overall, this story just fell flat for me.

Thank you to NetGalley & the publisher for providing an eARC for review.

I am a sucker for a classic found family, strange children, magical, cozy, romantic book. Every single element was something I enjoyed. It was also so heartwarming to see a South Indian MC as the lead, it actually made me tear up cause this is the kind of stuff I would like to write so seeing characters who look like me in it was so lovely.

It’s predictable, sweet, and kind. It’s a story that feels like a cup of tea, with perhaps some magic steeped into it <3

Absolutely adored this charming fun book about a house full of witches and the mortals who love them. Author Sangu Bandanna creates fun and original characters to carry out a fun and original idea. Refreshing all around. I recommended this one in my annual Witchy Book List in October 2022 on the Satellite Sisters podcast and newsletter. Looking forward to the next installment.

This reminded me of House in the Cerulean Sea, a very sweet found family romance. I do wish it had been a little bit longer and we would have gotten to see more of their day to day life and not just the "big" moments, but overall I really enjoyed it.

Thank you to Netgalley and Berkley for sending me a copy of this book! All opinions are my own!

This is a very sweet story of found family and finding self-acceptance and love in a world that isn't always forthcoming with those things. I loved the way that these characters came together to fight for one another and the way that everything came full circle at the end.

I felt like the romance was really flat and forced, and I ended up not really caring about that part of the story, which was really disappointing. I also felt like the story was really slow and found myself zoning out quite often.

The best characters were by far the young girls, and I feel like they shouldn't have been because the MC and her love interest should have been. It was a really good concept at first but just fell flat for me in the end.

Thank you so much to the publisher for sending me an ARC!
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Unfortunately I DNFed this, it just didn’t catch my attention and maybe I’ll get into it again when I’m in the perfect headspace to give this another try! But I would buy and recommend this to others definitely!

Very enjoyable. I really liked the world Ms Mandanna created. So lovely to see such diversity in characters. Samara MacLaren was a perfect narrator, good accents and differentiation of characters. A delightful story of finding oneself and a family, of loyalty and friendship. A real feel good book. Wonderful characters, sweet relationships, great description of the place. I would love to see this become a series. I want to know what happens to these young people as they grow, and how Primrose adapts to a new way of being in the magical world. My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

Absolutely completely enchanting. This is exactly what it promises to be -- cozy and steamy and full of found-family goodness. I've loved Sangu Mandanna's style in her YA short stories, and I am very glad to see her continuing to publish across genres and audiences and finding great success! The characters in this one are well-layered and so lovable, the writing weaves magic into every aspect of the story and transport you straight into this strange and wondrous and entirely whimsical world. I wish I could articulate just how deeply I love this book, but suffice it to say I can't recommend it enough.

This was the coziest and most comforting fantasy book I've read in a long time. Charming characters that I still think about.

This book is so stinking cute. I had so much trouble putting it down! I love the relationships between all of the occupants of Nowhere House and how they work with Mika. It was so magical and sweet.

I am so sad I ended up hating this book, because I honestly thought it was going to be a super cozy and super wholesome read and that I’d fall in love with the characters.
What I got instead was a mediocre book, which was trying to enforce tropes by telling and not showing them. I do not care how many times you tell me the heroine is a sunshine girl and the hero a grump, or that the heroine had never had a family before meeting the characters, I will not buy it, if you are only going to tell me that, and not actually show it.
I did not like any of the characters, because they did not have a personality. They were walking stereotypes and it bothered me to no end. The were flat, uninteresting and boring. I do think they had some potential in them, but it was not used as it could have.
The romance was also not it. The two main characters had no chemistry whatsoever, and only ended up together because there had to be romance in this book. I mean, without the romance there wouldn’t have been anything else, I guess, but still…
Which leads us to the plot. There was a tag on an Italian fanfiction site called “pwp”, meaning “plot what plot” or “porn without plot”, which indicated erotic stories without any real plot. I am going to borrow the “plot what plot” definition, but in this case there wasn’t even the porn. There was nothing at all in this freaking three hundred pages book. I’m mad.
In the last few pages the author did actually try to make something happen, but let’s just say it was so absurd I eye-rolled in real life and I am not even kidding. There’s a fine line between cozy fantasy and bad writing, I believe, and this author did not have the right balance.
Now, onto the writing style we go. What can I say? It was bad. I am sorry, but it really was. The author was constantly trying to be funny, but it only resulted in me cringing every other page. Moreover, it read like both a middle grade and an adult book at the same time, but not in a good way. I have no idea what the editor was doing, but they surely weren’t editing.
Overall, I hated everything about this book. I would not recommend it to anyone, honestly, because if you are looking for a cozy fantasy you’ll be disappointed, and if you are looking for a romance, there was none in here to speak of. On the other hand, it was a Goodreads Choice Awards nominee and people have been raving about it, so maybe it’s just that I did not understand how wonderful this book actually was (if I sound sarcastic, it’s because I am). Every year, I am more and more baffled by Goodreads nominations, but I digress.