Can’t Wait Wednesday – THE VERY SECRET SOCIETY OF IRREGULAR WITCHES by Sangu Mandanna
/14 Comments/by Suzanne
“Waiting On” Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted at Breaking the Spine, which encourages fellow bloggers to spotlight upcoming releases that we’re excited about. It is a meme that I have loved participating in since I first started blogging, but as Jill is no longer actively posting, from now on I’ll be linking to Can’t Wait Wednesday, hosted by Tressa at Wishful Endings, which is a spinoff of the original WoW meme.
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My selection for this week is THE VERY SECRET SOCIETY OF IRREGULAR WITCHES by Sangu Mandanna. I love witchy reads and stories that feature found families, so this book sounds perfect for me. 🙂
THE VERY SECRET SOCIETY OF IRREGULAR WITCHES by Sangu Mandanna
Publication Date: August 23, 2022 by Berkley Books
From Goodreads:
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.
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….
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I’d love to hear what upcoming book releases you’re waiting on this Wednesday? Leave me your link in the comments below and I’ll stop by and check out your CWW selection for this week. 🙂
Top Ten Tuesday – Ten Authors I Haven’t Read Yet, But Plan to in 2022
/25 Comments/by Suzanne
Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Top Ten Tuesday has been one of my favorite memes ever since I started blogging, so huge thanks to Jana for taking over the hosting duties!
This week’s TTT topic is Authors I Haven’t Read, But Want To. This was a pretty easy topic for me since I almost always have an ongoing list of authors I want to try. Today I’m sharing a list of mostly romance authors that I’m planning to try for the first time this year, as well as the actual book I’m planning to start with. Since I drafted this post, I’ve actually started reading the Julia Quinn book. After I binge watched season 2 of Bridgerton on Netflix a couple of weekends ago, I couldn’t resist diving into the book series that inspired the show.
Ten Authors I Haven’t Read Yet, But Plan to in 2022
1. ABBY JIMENEZ
2. EMMA SCOTT
3. JAYCI LEE
4. JILL SHALVIS
5. JULIA QUINN
7. PENNY REID
9. CHLOE LIESE
10. HELENA HUNTING
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Question: Have you read any of these authors?
Review: THE NO-SHOW by Beth O’Leary
/20 Comments/by SuzanneAlso by this author: The Switch
Published by BERKLEY on April 12, 2022
Genres: Contemporary Fiction, Women's Fiction
Pages: 352
Source: Netgalley
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Book Depository
Goodreads
FTC Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
Don’t let the rom-com vibes of its cover fool you, Beth O’Leary’s new novel The No-Show is no rom-com. While the story did make me smile at times, it also made me shed a tear or two because it’s such an emotional journey for some of the characters. The story also took a huge unexpected turn that I don’t want to spoil so I’m going to be a bit vague with what I enjoyed about this book.
The No-Show follows three women who only have one thing in common – they were all stood up by the same man, Joseph Carter, on Valentine’s Day. Siobhan is a life coach whose life is so over-booked that she doesn’t have time or the desire for a relationship. Since her past relationships haven’t been great, she has decided that booty calls are the way to go, with Joseph Carter being her go-to when she’s in the mood. Then there’s Miranda, a tree surgeon, the only woman on an all-male crew. She’s okay with being treated like one of the guys but she gets defensive when her crew makes fun of her boyfriend, Joseph Carter, because he’s so different from her that they don’t seem like they should be compatible. Lastly, there’s Jane, a young woman who volunteers at a charity job and who has decided, after a disastrous romance at her former workplace, that she will no longer date. To keep everyone she knows off her case about finding herself a man, she has a friend that she fake-dates whenever she has a function to attend. That is, until she realizes she actually has feelings for him. That man is, you guessed it, Joseph Carter.
Aside from the mystery of how this guy manages to keep up relationships with all three of these women but somehow manages to stand them all up on the most romantic day of the year, what really fascinated me were these women’s reactions to being stood up and the fact that all three of them actually forgive him and let him back into their lives. In that sense, the story focuses much more on the emotional and personal journeys of Siobhan, Miranda, and Jane than it focuses on Carter. I loved how well-developed and fleshed out all three of the women were. Their voices and experiences were each unique, as was their path forward after being stood up. I loved watching the other relationships they cultivated that in many ways were more important than their relationships with Carter. I loved the friends Jane made through the charity shop and how they supported her and boosted her confidence, and I loved Miranda’s teammates who, although they razzed her at times, ended up being a pretty great support system for her as well.
Solving the enigma of Joseph Carter and wondering if one of these women was going to end up kicking his butt also had me very invested in the story. I was so ready to hate this guy, and that’s when the entire story gets turned on its end and takes a direction I was not even remotely expecting. I’m used to this kind of huge twist in thrillers, so it really caught me off guard here. Beth O’Leary is sneaky here and I mean that in the best possible way.
I don’t want to say anything else because you really need to meet Joseph Carter and follow the women in his life yourself to get the full experience. If you’re in the mood for a beautifully crafted story of love, friendship, and how to move forward when life doesn’t turn out the way you thought it would, you’ll want to check out Beth O’Leary’s new novel, The No-Show. 4 STARS
About Beth O’Leary
Beth studied English at university before going into children’s publishing. She lives as close to the countryside as she can get while still being within reach of London, and wrote her first novel, The Flatshare, on her train journey to and from work.
You’ll usually find her curled up with a book, a cup of tea, and several woolly jumpers (whatever the weather).