A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna

Timy reviews A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping, a standalone cozy romantasy novel by Sangu Mandanna. Out on July 17, 2025 by Hodderscape!

An eARC was received by Hodderscape via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Possible fit for The Sound of Madness Reading Challenge 2025 prompts:

Joker prompt that goes with anything: Freed from Desire

What if love is the best magic of all?

An enchanting novel about a witch who has a second chance to get her magic – and her life – back on track, from the author of The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches.

Sera Swan was once one of the most powerful witches in Britain. Then she resurrected her great-aunt, lost most of her magic, befriended a semi-villainous talking fox, and was exiled from her magical Guild.

Now she runs an inn in Lancashire, where she deals with her quirky guests’ shenanigans, tries to keep the fox in check, and longs for the magical future she lost.

Then she discovers a book that could hold the secret to restoring her power. Trouble is, the only person who can help her is Luke Larsen, the gorgeous historian she had a one-night stand with years ago – and hasn’t spoken to since.

As Luke and Sera work together to reclaim her lost power, Sera starts to realise that love – and the family she’s made – could be the best magic of all . . .

“Fine,” she said, blinking up from a pile of pillows at Luke and Jasmine, neither of whom was above saying they’d told her so. “I should have taken it a bit slower. But look! Look how pretty everything is!”
“Prettier than you are right now, certainly,” Matilda offered. “You’ve got the bug-eyed, jittery look of a meerkat that’s eaten an entire bag of sugar.”

Since I loved The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna a couple of years back (I’ve reread it a few times since), there was no question in my mind that I would jump on the opportunity to get my hands on an ARC of her new adult fantasy novel. I’ve been waiting (impatiently, I might add) for A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping, and I’m happy to report it was worth the wait.

Similarly to The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, Mandanna’s new novel is set in a home – Batty Hole, the inn our heroine Sera runs together with her great aunt, Jasmine – it has a theme of found family, and the MC is a witch – as well as some of the other characters. They both are cozy romantasies as well, and I think that’s about the list of similarities. Although, both love interests have similar characteristics. But I’m not going to keep comparing the two books as they have no relation to each other apart from the fact they are written by the same person. What I’m trying to say is, if you enjoyed the former book, you’ll enjoy A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping as well.

Sera was born to parents who didn’t really care about parenting, so she was mostly raised by her great aunt Jasmine. She was also born a very powerful witch, only rivaled by Albert Grey, who also happens to be a member of a prestigious witch family, closely knitted with the Guild that looks over all the witches in Great Britain. Needless to say he is a narcissistic, snob prick who makes everyone else’s life a mysery. When Sera looses most of her power by resurrecting her great aunt, he gets her exiled. Sera would love nothing more than getting back her magic, and so she devotes her life to the growing quirkly family in the inn and the search. When her old friend turns up to take back an important book taken from the library of the Guild, it starts off unexpected events. She finally has the spell, Luke moves in with his autistic little sister after being led there by his boss, Verity – who also happens to be the one who helped Sera a lot as a child – and all of that forces Sera to face her past and insecurities.

The plot of A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping is not very complex (and I don’t mean this as a criticism), and the book is mostly set in the inn, so we get to know the residents quite well. This book is pretty much a perfect example for a found family theme, as everyone who settles in the inn looks for something they need and thanks to Jasmine’s kind, quiet care and Sera’s skills at keeping a firm hold on things, they are thriving. Even if Sera doesn’t feel like she does. She is burdened by some of her childhood traumas, including the loss of most of her magic and along with it her identity to a degree.

There are a lot of things that this book does well – I loved the found family theme, how the characters’ personalities came through, the building romance that felt natural and not at all forced, and how Mandanna handled all the fun, the heartbreaking and tense moments. Once I started reading I could barely put it down because I just wanted to hang out in this world with their everyday problems as well as their witchy ones. And even though I loved it to pieces, I also had some minor complaints. Since this is the first Mandanna book I’ve read (I listened to the audiobook with the other one), I don’t know if this is her personal writing style, but I felt that the italicised words were super overused in this book. There was at least one on each page, but more times than not there were 2-3, which once I noticed very early on, kept taking me out of the reading momentarily. Now, I don’t usually comment on things like this in case of ARCs under the assumption they’ll be fixed in the final version, but I have a feeling this might not be the case. Although I hope I’m wrong. It’s not a major issue, per se, but once I noticed, I couldn’t unsee it.

Another thing I wasn’t sure about was Clammie’s story arc. Which absolutely doesn’t make any sense. Not the whole thing, just the ending. Plus, she was my least favorite character, and she wasn’t even the villain. She just didn’t feel as well rounded out as the others. Speaking of, I kinda wished Albert Grey had a bit more presence overall in the book. He’s got good characterisation, even if he ended up being a bit one dimensional for my liking.

My minor complaints aside, I really enjoyed A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping. Reading it feels like a huge cozy blanket wrapped around you on a cool autumn day. I’m not sure why it was set to be released in the Summer as it’s more an Autumny/Wintery read, but anyway, definitely a must read in 2025.