Author: Alyxandra Harvey
The Secret Witch is book 1 in The Witches of London Trilogy. There are two more books, which I aim to read. This first one, The Secret Witch, was a bit confusing to start with, but once I got into the story, I thought it was very compelling.
Emma is part of the British aristocracy, and she develops special powers, which happen during a debutante ball in London, when there is also a fire and the murder of one of the debutantes. The wind drags her to the body, and she fears she would be accused of murder she did not commit, whilst also dealing with a strange knot appearing on her palm. As it turns out, she is a witch and has just developed her powers. But, this is not all. The whole aristocratic society has powers and consists of witches with different powers. Emma is a weather witch, which explains how the fire got put down (when she has an emotional reaction, she calls for rain, and depending on the severity of her emotions, rain can also turn into snow and ice) at the debutante ball, although the fire was caused by her dropping her mother’s bottle. Her mother was also a witch, albeit an infamous one in the upper class society due to defying the secretive order of Keepers that control witchcraft and ensure no black magic is ever used and that society is protected from those creatures that have black magic and come from the underworld, kills witches and takes their powers away, and threatens to ensue chaos in an otherwise harmonious witchy upper class society. In the book, she navigates her newly formed powers, tries to learn how to control and use them, but also fights with the Order and their Keepers, who suspect her of murdering debutantes as murders keep happening, and Emma always finds herself near the murder scene. She also learns about her family history, including her mother, Theodora, and her mother’s Lovegrove family, and why her mother was banished from the Order, as well as a family secret about her mother’s personal affairs, a story nicely interwoven with the book tackling the alleged present. We also learn about her cousins, Gretchen and Penelope, who are also members of the society and have powers, and I suspect these two will have a bigger role in future books.
What was compelling was the notion of aristocracy being about witchcraft and having to hide from those who do not have power in plain sight, because people would not understand. I can see how this would be hard in the past when societies were smaller and there was less distraction. In today’s world of technology, people can drop dead to the floor, and many people would not even notice it due to being too preoccupied with their phones. What was also interesting was that, despite not being a conventional society, manners and rules of appropriate behaviour and dress codes still very much applied, and were still used to distinguish society from the common folk, including those who also had witchy powers but were not, for example, allowed to go to the Academy and hone their skills and powers. The message of the book seems to be that humans will always find a way to form groups and divide themselves according to those who are like them in some way, and other those who they do not see as identical to themselves.
A very interesting book full of action and the author’s imagination of secret witchy powers (which she acknowledges do not attempt to correspond to any ancient societies). The book is definitely a valuable addition to the Witcherature.
Thank you for reading!