Witches and Letters

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna is a cute, cosy story about a witch called Mika, who is invited to tutor three young witch girls at a giant house in the country. It's about found family, building community and breaking through barriers caused by relationship trauma from the past. It's very sweet and heartfelt and also pretty funny in places and I enjoyed listening to the audiobook a lot. It acknowledges the issues with fully trusting people when you've had bad experiences in the past - though I did feel as though the resolution of all the various aspects of the plot seemed too easy and too neat. Very lovely overall, though!


Orange by Ichigo Takano is a manga about a group of high school friends, one of whom receives a letter from her future self, warning that the new boy in her class will die before the year is out and asking that she try to save him. A lot of it deals with quite dark subjects and complex emotions - and it does that very well. It also has its silly moments, and the romance aspects are incredibly painful. But its heart is very much in the right place and it definitely hit me in the feels pretty strongly at various moments. It felt a bit drawn out - and the extra two volumes after the end of the main story, while they did add a certain amount, did feel a bit scattershot and confusing at times. There were several twists I didn't see coming, and I grew to really love all the characters over the course of the story.