Publication Date: 17th July 2025
Genre: Witchy Romance
2.7 Stars
One Liner: Nice vibes but tries too hard
Sera Swan went from being one of the most powerful witches in Britain to being exiled from the Guild after resurrecting her great-aunt and losing her magic. She runs an inn in Lancashire, dealing with quirky quests and hoping to get her magic back.
Then Sera finds a book that has the secret to restore her power. However, she needs help from Luke Larsen, the historian she has a history with. As they work together, Sera realizes that magic was with her all along!
The story comes in the third-person POVs of Sera and Luke, with random switches to omnipresent POV.
My Thoughts:
After enjoying The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches (adult fic) and loving Vanya and the Wild Hunt (MG fic), I was excited to read this one. While the book has all the vibes you need for a cozy witchy feel-good fiction, they don’t translate to a wholesome novel.
What I Like:
• The setting of the inn, its descriptions, and the magic around it. The place gives safe and homely vibes, which is exactly what it is.
• The collection of misfits who made the inn their home. Quirky, sweet, and a bit OTT, but good people (with a huge gray area in the case of Clemmie).
• Jasmine, the FMC’s great-aunt. A bit surprised by her backstory, but I guess that was the intention.
• Posy and Theo, the two kids, make the book easier to read.
• The concept of the restoration spell and the final ingredients that worked.
• A few scenes here and there with some laughs and the narration that suited the scenes.
What Didn’t Work:
• The slow pacing should have added to the intrigue but failed to create a proper hook. This is not a book where I can say the story started with a bang. It sadly didn’t.
• The loose plot is pretty thin and depends entirely on vibes to create the required impact. I stopped my first day’s reading at 55% and could sum up everything in a single line.
• The romance was supposed to be a slow burn, but ended up lacking chemistry and emotion. All the right words are there, but the feel is missing.
• A book with nice diversity and varied themes like racism, immigration, bias, etc., should have been good. Sadly, it doesn’t feel natural but more like ticking off a checklist to please certain audiences.
• Loads of assurances and ‘you are good as you are’ speeches that don’t do the job. I’d rather they all helped come up with ideas for the spell. That would have been more fun.
• The climax and ending. After all the struggle and everything, you end up doing this? Duh! Come on! There has to be a loophole to fix it.
• The villain is also all vibes and snobbish with little substance. Give him some meat. Even if it is a cozy fantasy, he can play the part better than this.
To summarize, A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping has its moments, but it doesn’t meet my expectations. The best way to mess up something is to try too hard. Looks like that’s what happened here.
Thank you, NetGalley and Hodderscape, for the eARC.
#NetGalley # AWitchsGuideToMagicalInnkeeping
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