The House in the Cerulean Sea meets The Golden Girls in this funny, tender, and uplifting feminist tale of sisterhood featuring a coven of aging witches who must unite their powers to fight the men determined to drive them out of their home and town.

A coven of modern-day witches. A magical heist-gone-wrong. A looming threat. Summoned by an alarm, five octogenarian witches gather around Ursula when danger is revealed to her in a vision.

An angry mob of townsmen is advancing with a wrecking ball, determined to demolish Moonshyne Manor and Distillery. All eyes turn to Queenie—as the witch in charge, it’s her job to reassure them – but she confesses they’ve fallen far behind on their mortgage payments and property taxes.

Queenie has been counting on Ruby’s return in two days to fix everything. Ruby is the only one who knows where the treasure is hidden, those valuable artifacts stolen 33 years ago on the night when everything went horribly wrong. Why didn’t clairvoyant Ursula see this coming sooner?

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Wasn’t Ivy supposed to be working her botanical magic to keep the townsmen in a state of perpetual drugged calm, all while Jezebel quelled revolts through seductive bewitchment?

The mob is only the start of the witches’ troubles. Brad Gedney, a distant cousin of Ivy, is hellbent on avenging his family for the theft of a legacy that was rightfully his. In an act of desperation, Queenie makes a bargain with an evil far more powerful than anything they’ve ever faced. And things take a turn for the worse when Ruby’s homecoming reveals a seemingly insurmountable obstacle.

In a race against time, the women have nine days to save their home and business. The witches are determined to save their home and themselves, but fear their aging powers are no match against increasingly malicious threats. Thankfully, they get a bit of extra help from Persephone, a feisty TikToker eager to smash the patriarchy. As the deadline approaches, fractures among the sisterhood are revealed, and long-held secrets are exposed, culminating in a fiery confrontation with their enemies.

My Review

Who would have thought this book would make me cry? But it did. I’m not saying when or why. It also made me laugh and want to be a witch (some would say that’s not such a far leap). So excuse me a second while I pop my broomstick away in the cupboard, consult my personal grimoire, and let us begin.

There is so much I loved about this book. The witches – Ursula, Queenie, Ivy, Tabby, Jezebel and Ruby – plus 15-year-old Persephone and Tabby’s familiar, an elderly crow named Widget. I must also mention that Persephone has a dog called Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I am ashamed to say that I didn’t know who she was, though I assumed she was a real person. I apologise. I’m making myself sound really ignorant, but although it’s no excuse, I am in the UK. In fact I felt so bad, I looked her up and have been doing quite a bit of reading about her. What a marvellous woman! Born in 1933, she was only the second woman and the first Jewish woman to be appointed to the US Supreme Court. And she was 60 years old at the time. She was a champion of gay rights, women’s rights, the poor and many other marginalised groups. It explains why the dreadful Brad Gedney in the story has a photo of himself shaking hands with Donald Trump (who I guess was not a fan of Ms Ginsburg).

But I digress yet again. The six witches have lived in Moonshyne Manor since they all arrived as children and that was many years ago as they are all in their eighties (maybe Jezebel hasn’t quite hit 80 but she’s near enough). But now they risk losing everything unless they can pay the half a million dollars they owe the bank. And in an act of desperation, Queenie makes a bargain with an evil far more powerful than anything they’ve ever faced. But maybe Ruby will be able to help when she comes home, except she is no longer the person she was the last time they saw her.

To add to the problem, a group of local dignitaries ie the mayor, the bank manager etc, want to knock down the manor and distillery, and turn the land into a theme park called Men’s World. This just gets more Trump all the time. But Persephone, who happens to be the daughter of one of the men, is a staunch feminist with strong feelings of her own. I love how she talks about Youtube, TikTok and Harry Potter and the witches have no idea what she’s on about. And she wants to help them, but why does Queenie try to keep her away?

Writing this review is like talking in riddles – it’s so hard not to give anything away. Suffice to say I just adored it. There is so much that resonated with me, even though I am not in my eighties or have I got magical powers unfortunately. But it’s the whole idea of people power, in this case the power of women, proving that you can do anything if you put your collective minds (and wands) to it. This book is a triumph.

Oh yes – and there are recipes for some simple spells and salves (I wonder if any of them are real), plus the ultimate banned spell – A Spell to Grant the Deepest Longing of Your Yearning Heart. However, it requires amongst other things a gallon of rainwater from Puerto Rico, 1/2 gallon of black rhino urine, 3 drops of Cuchumatan golden toad saliva, some scorpion venom, an eyelash from a ruling British monarch, 2 oz placenta powder from a sextuplet birth and a powerful magical artifact, so I think we can safely say it might be rather difficult to perform.

Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of #RandomThingsTours

About the Author

Bianca Marais is the author of the beloved Hum If You Don’t Know the Words and If You Want to Make God Laugh (Putnam, 2017 and 2019). She teaches at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies where she was awarded an Excellence in Teaching Award for Creative Writing in 2021. A believer in the power of storytelling in advancing social justice, Marais runs the Eunice Ngogodo Own Voices Initiative to empower young Black women in Africa to write and publish their own stories, and is constantly fundraising to assist grandmothers in Soweto with caring for children who have been orphaned by HIV/AIDS. In 2020, Marais started the popular podcast, The Shit No One Tells You About Writing, which is aimed at helping emerging writers become published.