books

Sangu Mandanna's adult debut lives firmly in the cozy fantasy lane that The House in the Cerulean Sea and Legends & Lattes have made so popular, and for the most part it earns its place there. The set-up is exactly the kind of premise that invites you to sink in: Mika Moon, a lonely witch in Britain, has spent her life following Primrose Everly's rule that witches must stay apart lest their combined magic draw unwanted attention. Orphaned young and raised by a rotating cast of tutors, she leaks her isolation into the world through videos where she "pretends" to be a witch for an audience who naturally assume she's performing. Then someone at a remote place called Nowhere House realises she's the real thing and asks her to come and teach three young witches to control their powers.

What follows is a gentle, character-driven novel about belonging, and the household at Nowhere House is its greatest strength. Ian, a flamboyant retired actor, and his quieter husband Ken form the beating heart of it; Lucie the housekeeper grumbles companionably in the margins; the three children - Rosetta, Terracotta and Altamira - are sketched with enough individual quirks that they never blur into a single mass. Jamie, the prickly librarian and inevitable love interest, provides the grumpy half of a grumpy-sunshine pairing that works best in its early stages of mutual suspicion and pining. Mandanna writes that longing with real skill, and the first half of the novel coasts beautifully on small domestic moments and crackling dialogue.

The book is less sure-footed once it has to deliver on its own stakes. The central threat - a nosy solicitor who could evict the children from the only home they've known - provides a ticking clock that feels slightly manufactured, and the resolution arrives quickly enough that it risks feeling unearned. The romance loses some of its momentum after the pining gives way to consummation; the single explicit scene sits oddly against the otherwise wholesome tone, and a late plot turn is divisive enough to break the gentler register the book had carefully built. There is also a slightly heavy hand with the themes of kindness, chosen family and self-acceptance, which are reiterated often enough that the messaging starts to crowd out the subtext.

Despite these wobbles, it's difficult not to come away fond of the place Mandanna has built. The prose is warm, the humour lands more often than not, and the Britain of the novel - rainy, green, a little magical around the edges - is drawn with real affection. As a comfort read it delivers almost everything the genre promises: a cup of tea, a fire, a cottage full of people who eventually learn to love one another, and a protagonist whose tentative unclenching is a pleasure to watch. It is not a flawless book, but it is a deeply likeable one, and its charms outweigh its weaker seams by a comfortable margin.