Book Summary and Reviews of A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna

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Marianne Vincent

an enjoyable read
A Witch’s Guide To Magical Innkeeping is the third stand-alone novel by British author, Sangu Mandanna. You might come across the Batty Hole Inn in Lancashire, especially if lost or adrift. Probably not if you’re going to be a difficult customer, because Sera Swan’s spell is quite picky. She runs the inn with her great aunt Jasmine, and has the care of her eleven-year-old cousin, Theo, a witch whose Icelandic parents fear his powers.

Keeping them company are Matilda, an odd black woman with an enthusiasm for gardening, Nicholas, a twenty-three-year-old armour-wearing knight, Clemmie, a witch whose curse backfired to trap her in the body of a fox, and Roo-Roo, the undead rooster that Sera accidentally reincarnated when she was resurrecting a recently-dead Jasmine with an illegal spell.

That illegal spell, fifteen years earlier, took Sera from being one of the most gifted witches in the land, to having barely enough power to keep her protection spell over the inn going. It’s true, Sera would love to have her magic back, but that would require a reversal spell, to be found in the Ninth Compendium of Uncommon Spells, kept securely in the library of the British Guild of Sorcery.

When that book turns up at the inn, due to some covert action by Theo and Clemmie (who wants Sera to remove the fox curse), the Chancellor of the Guild is hot on its heels. But strangely, they’re not in as much trouble as they ought to be. The spell, though, presents more challenge than just translating it from ancient language: the ingredients are cryptic and seem impossible to source. Until luscious Luke Larsen turns up at the inn…

It’s disappointing that Mandanna chooses to pepper this sweet cosy fantasy romance with an unnecessary expletive: the F-word occurs 33 times, counted because it’s simply not a good fit with the characters, and doesn’t enhance the story. Not quite as good as The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, but still an enjoyable read.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Hodder and Stoughton