A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping

Mandanna’s literary worlds are all thematically connected, even among her standalone novels. For example, her protagonists are often alienated from the broader community of witches and even from their own birth families, and they grow to understand The Value of Found Family as their stories progress. Like Mika Moon, the protagonist of The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, Sera Swan is in her early thirties and does not have a solid sense of who she is. Both characters are raised by guardians who are not their natural parents, and both have tenuous relationships with their own magic due to their difficult childhoods. Mika and Sera both lack adequate magical guidance, though for different reasons, and they both long for connection with others who understand and accept them. As the lodger Matilda tells Sera, “Families share a name, apparently, yet here we are […] I’m just saying we’re here for you […] No matter what happens with your magic. Whether you get it back or not. We’re here” (250). Surrounded by these kindly sentiments, Sera and her lodgers find a sense of belonging with the families they create rather than the ones into which they were born.