By Larissa Page
The newest novel from Bianca Marais comes out a little later this summer and it has been compared to “Golden Girls meets Hocus Pocus,” which I think is a pretty apt description. It is the story of six geriatric witches who have lived at Moonshyne Manor since childhood. Now in their eighties, they run the risk of losing a home that has become part of their sisterhood itself. In order to save their home, they must work against the clock to find a lost treasure they stole thirty years before. They’ve waited thirty years to have their sixth sister back, to find the treasure, pay off their debts, and save the manor—but it simply won’t be that easy.
This novel is a departure from Marais’s previous works of fiction. She is well loved for her two previous and similar novels and has also recently released an Audible original audiobook that steps into the sci-fi/dystopia genre. This novel, however, is modern and magical while still employing many of Marais’s go-to literary tools. It is rife with red herrings and misdirection, which gives the novel a few small, surprising twists.
This novel was a lot of fun. It wasn’t heavy even though there were aspects and topics that could have been. It was light, but the characters were still well crafted and their relationships still meaningfully described. The cast was large: six witches, a teenage TikTok-er, and a villain. While it did take a little bit of effort not to confuse all the characters and they could have been a little bit more developed, I didn’t feel like anything from the story was lost with how it was told.
One thing I did find to be a bit heavy was the pop culture or cliché references. I attribute this to personal preference, as most of the books I read are not pop culture-related books, but I think other readers will find these really fun (and I did as well, I just found there to be a lot). There was a Harry Potter reference, which in this day and age can be exciting for some people and problematic for others. It wasn’t harped on, though, so I moved past it easily. The thing I think I found most surprising was how balanced the book was between the deeper topics such as sexuality and gender fluidity/transition, and the pop culture references and fun things like a magical heist.
Ultimately this upcoming novel by Bianca Marais might not be what you are expecting if you’ve read her previous work, but it is very fun, it is witchy, it is feminist, and it is worth the read.