48 pages • 1 hour read
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A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping (2025) is Sangu Mandanna’s 10th novel and follows Sera Swan, who lost her magic at age 15 and feels disempowered because she doesn’t know who she is without it. Her love interest, Luke Larsen, is undergoing an identity crisis of his own. As Sera, Luke, and several other people who live at the Batty Hole Inn become a found family, they all realize that they are more capable and lovable than they ever believed.
Mandanna was raised in Bangalore (now Bengaluru), India, and now lives in Norwich, England. She is known for writing fantasy novels for both children and adults, and she also enjoys creating characters who find new sources of strength within themselves. A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping takes on a whimsical tone to explore themes such as The Value of Found Family, The Inaccuracy of Self-Perception, and The Healing Power of Love.
This guide refers to the 2025 Penguin Random House paperback edition.
Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of child abuse, emotional abuse, bullying, ableism, racism, and mental illness.
Sera Swan is a witch who was born with considerably more magical power than most witches in her magical community. However, years ago, when she was a child, her parents abandoned her, leaving her with her aunt Jasmine, who also took over the family’s inn, the Batty Hole. At one point, Sera cast a spell on the inn so that the only guests who would be able to find it would always be kind and in need of something that the inn could provide.
When Jasmine dies, Sera resurrects her with the help of Clementine “Clemmie” Bennet, a witch who has been trapped in a fox’s body. Because Sera is as powerful as the cruel Guild Minister, Albert Grey (the man to whom she is apprenticed), her spell is successful, and Jasmine is brought back to life. However, the spell drains Sera’s magic, so she stays at the Batty Hole and avoids Albert for weeks. Sera’s friend and Albert’s daughter, Francesca, comes to investigate her absence and demands to know why Sera hasn’t returned to her magical studies. Sera confesses that she resurrected Jasmine, and hours later, Albert storms in. Sera can tell that he’s pleased that her power no longer equals his. Albert offers to trade the Guild’s forgiveness for Clemmie (who tried to curse him and became a fox when the curse backfired), but Sera refuses, so he exiles her from the Guild altogether.
Fifteen years later, Sera still lives and works at the Batty Hole Inn along with Jasmine, Clemmie, Sera’s 11-year-old cousin Theo (whose parents fear his magic), Nicholas (a 23-year-old lodger who works as a knight at the Medieval Fair), and Matilda, an elderly Black woman who loves to garden. Sera believes that a particular spell can restore her magic, but it is in a book at the Guild library, which she can’t access.
Theo and Clemmie are suspiciously absent one day, and when they return, they are followed by Francesca, who is now the new Chancellor of the British Guild of Sorcery. She apologizes to Sera for betraying her 15 years ago, and she reports that Theo and a fox stole a spell book from the Guild’s library. Theo confesses. Clemmie wants Sera to restore her to human form, but Sera needs her magic to do so, and this book holds the only incantation that might work. Sera returns the book, but Francesca lets her take pictures of the spell. Francesca also mentions that Albert has a magical contract that gives him Guild privileges and makes her his political puppet.
Later, a magical researcher named Luke Larson arrives at the inn with his nine-year-old sister, Posy, and greets Sera by name. He works for a witch named Verity Walter. He explains that earlier that day, Posy, who has both autism and magical powers, caused a disruption at the Guild. Verity’s office suggested that the siblings take a “break” from the Guild and gently nudged him in the direction of the inn, the magic of which drew him in. Sera remembers Luke from school and invites him to stay. Luke explains that his and Posy’s parents don’t want Posy at home, and Sera promises that they can stay as long as they like. Luke then helps Sera translate the spell from the book, and she learns that she must locate three impossible ingredients: a “thorny heart,” a “phoenix feather” and a “strand of sunset” (113). If she manages to find the ingredients, she will be able to restore her lost magic.
Luke tells Sera that the restoration spell is “adaptable,” not literal; this means that the ingredients can be metaphorical. Sera enchants the glass teapot that will collect all the ingredients, but it rejects her first attempted offerings. Luke says that the objects she offers the teapot must be important to her. As he spends time at the inn, he is struck by its fairy-tale quality and recognizes that all the lodgers take care of each other.
Verity asks Luke to investigate whether it’s possible to steal someone’s magic. The spell he finds stipulates that the spellcaster must give up their own magic. When Matilda and Nicholas spot Posy levitating, Sera tells them the truth about magic and witches. Suddenly, she realizes that the artichokes that Matilda grows have “thorny hearts,” and the teapot accepts one of them with a puff of smoke.
Posy thrives at the inn and wants to stay there, but Luke feels insecure and questions whether the lodgers will ever accept him as they have others. One night, Luke and Sera share an intimate moment in which the darkest aspects of her past are revealed. Rather than judging her, Luke shows unconditional support and acceptance for who she was and who she is now. Although he helps Sera show herself greater compassion, she still feels like she’s lost parts of herself. In a romantic moment, she and Luke almost kiss.
The next day, they discuss her idea to steal the essence of sunlight from a Guild Minister’s estate during his annual masquerade party. She enlists Clemmie to lure Albert away from the party. At the masquerade, Luke and Sera find the sunlight essence in the library. Just after Luke pours three droplets into a vial, Albert arrives and threatens to hurt Luke, so Sera gives him the vial. Francesca allows them to leave, and Luke reminds Sera that there are other ways to get the ingredients for the adaptable spell. Later, Posy draws a picture of a sunset with a tail, and Theo realizes that Clemmie’s fur is the color of sunset. The teapot accepts one of her hairs.
Verity finds someone to work with Posy in Edinburgh, so Luke and Posy leave the inn, but Luke misses how free he and Posy felt there. When Luke’s friend Howard wonders why Luke would leave such a welcoming place, Luke says that he wanted to avoid overstaying his welcome, and he realizes that he always pushes people away so that they cannot hurt him. Luke decides to return to the inn.
Meanwhile, Sera loans Nicholas her swan necklace as a talisman, and when Nick says that he thought it was a “firebird,” Sera realizes that the necklace is the “phoenix feather”—the spell’s final ingredient. When Luke arrives, she tells him about her epiphany, and they have sex. The next morning, Nicholas returns Sera’s necklace, and she drops it into the teapot. With the spell complete, her magic returns immediately.
Sera untangles Clemmie’s curse, returning her to human form. Francesca asks Sera to break Albert’s magical contract with the Guild, and Sera stands before the Guild and demands that they abandon their xenophobia, elitism, racism, and ableism. When they agree, she breaks the seal, and they expel the tyrannical Albert from their ranks. Francesca hints that Clemmie betrayed Sera, and Sera confronts Clemmie, who admits that at the masquerade party, Albert promised to break her curse if she told him what Sera was up to. Furious, Sera goes home without Clemmie.
Two days later, an enraged Albert arrives at the inn. Sera stands up to him, but she realizes that he will hurt those she loves, so she challenges him to a duel and then uses the incantation to steal Albert’s magic, which also forces her to sacrifice her own.
Sera is unconscious for days. When she wakes up, she finds that she is now a Guild hero and that Clemmie is the new Chancellor. Sera has very little magic left, but she is sure that she will rise from the ashes again as she always does. When she sees wildflowers bursting through the snow, she realizes that her magic will never be completely gone.