thewitchlingshelf | Recent Entries

This is a quiet place.

A shelf carved from shadow and softwood, tucked somewhere between the roots of a crooked tree and the dustier corners of an old library. Here, I gather books that hum—witchlit, folklore, moody fantasy, soft horror, stories that smell of damp leaves and candlewax.

You’ll find:
✧ book musings & reading lists
✧ folklore notes & fairy-tale fragments
✧ journal entries that smell faintly of lavender and rain
✧ thoughts on stories that sit heavy or linger sweet

This is a shelf for the soft gloom, the forest-hearted, and the ones who read by moonlight.

About the Keeper

I'm Lila, the one tending this shelf—part forest-witch, part bookwyrm, always a little ink-stained. I read stories like omens and gather fragments like feathers: pressed between pages, tucked in notebooks, whispered into cups of tea. My favorites live in the shadows between folklore and fantasy, where the magic is quiet and a little bittersweet.

I believe in soft-spoken spells, books as talismans, and the comfort of rereading. Most days, you’ll find me with a cardigan full of pocket lint and dried herbs, a book half-read, and a journal half-written.

Lavender tea is steeping. The pages are open. You’re welcome here.

Current Mood: excited
Current Location: at home
Current Music: a song

A quiet catalogue of what’s tucked between the pages.

Below is a guide to the tags you’ll find used here—a way to wander the shelf gently, by theme or mood. Some are practical, some a little poetic. All are doors to somewhere else.

✦ Spellbook & Story

·       book musings – reviews, reflections, reading lists
·       witchlit – dreamy magic, soft horror, and moon-drenched fiction
·       folklore fragments – myths, fairytales, eerie little truths
·       haunted & soft – books with ghosts, grief, and slow-burning sorrow
·       cozy fantasy – gentle worlds and small comforts
·       currently reading – wandering updates & to-be-finished tales

✦ Ink & Introspection

·       journal entries – ink-stained thoughts, mood notes, quiet days
·       tea & ritual – soft routines, comfort objects, tiny spells
·       soft gloom – for the dim-lit and soul-heavy
·       seasonal – thoughts tied to solstices, moons, or weather

✦ The Witchling’s Cabinet

·       herbarium – lore of plants, scents, dried petals and meaning
·       pressed things – memory fragments, paper ephemera, old charms
·       treasures & tokens – satchel contents, shelf objects, tiny finds

✦ Navigation

·       intro post – the beginning of all this
·       about this journal – who keeps this place
·       tag directory – this very page
·       start here – good entries for new visitors

This shelf grows with time—tags may be added like feathers, leaves, and stories, tucked gently where they belong. 🌿

Current Mood: busy

📖 Title: The Midnight Library
✍️ Author: Matt Haig

🔮 First Impressions:
The book begins like a hush before dawn—sorrow-laced, quiet, and full of potential. The concept pulled me in immediately: a library between life and death, with books that let you live all your possible lives. It felt both gently magical and achingly human.

✨ Mood:
Midnight snow, ticking clocks, regret like fog, hope held in trembling hands

🍵 Tea Pairing:
Chamomile and vanilla with a dash of oat milk—comforting, soothing, like a soft light in the dark

🕯️ Spell Notes:
"You don't have to understand life. You just have to live it."

📚 Progress:
🖤 Started: [your date here]
🖤 Finished: [your date here]
🖤 Pages turned by candlelight: as if I were walking barefoot across a field of quiet maybes

💭 Thoughts So Far / Reflections:
The Midnight Library is both a fable and a mirror. It explores depression, regret, and the idea of second chances with tenderness, asking: What if you could undo your disappointments? Would you be happier, or just… different?

Nora is a relatable protagonist, not because she’s extraordinary, but because she’s ordinary in the exact ways that hurt. Her journey through lives unlived is moving, and at times deeply comforting, though the narrative edges close to repetition in places. Still, the message shines through: even the quietest life can be meaningful.

This isn't a book that dazzles with literary tricks—it speaks softly, like a friend who’s sat with you through the dark. A balm for low moments, and a gentle push toward choosing life.

A little predictable at times, but honest and kind. I’m glad I visited the library.

"Some flavours belong to sunlight. Some are spells best served cold."

There are tastes that mean summer—like memory you can hold on your tongue. Not just food, but feeling. Sun-warmed moments, sticky fingers, and the quiet enchantment of eating something seasonal, simple, and sacred.

🌞 My Favourite Summer-Associated Foods

🍓 Strawberries and cream
An absolute ritual. Eaten on a picnic blanket, with grass marks on your knees and the sound of bees nearby. There's something soft and decadent about them—like the sweetness of June itself.

🌿 Cucumber sandwiches with lemony butter
Soothing, crisp, almost old-fashioned. They feel like they belong to afternoon teas in secret gardens, or to books with hidden keyholes and lost time.

🍅 Heirloom tomatoes with fresh basil
Still warm from the sun, sliced and salted. The taste of slow-growing things, of gardens tended by hand and heart.

🍋 Lemon sorbet
A sharp kiss on a hot day. Clean, bright, a little flirty. Eaten barefoot on the back step, with sunlight spilling everywhere.

🍑 Peaches so ripe they almost fall apart
Sticky and golden, best eaten over the sink or with a napkin tucked under your chin. They taste like secrets you meant to keep but whispered anyway.

🌸 Elderflower cordials and iced herbal teas
Infusions of garden and spellwork—lavender, mint, rosehip. Chilled in glass bottles, sipped with a sigh under a willow tree.

Food is memory. And summer food—light, fragrant, messy, and magical—reminds me to slow down, savour, and taste the season fully.

What tastes like summer to you?

Even a week in, there’s still magic in writing down what you plan to read.

There’s something sacred in the naming of books—like lighting a candle before a spell. Each one holds a mood, a moment, a possible transformation. I never expect to finish them all, but choosing them is its own kind of enchantment.

Some are carried over from June, like the scent of a story still lingering in the air. Others have waited patiently on my shelf for their season to arrive—and maybe this is it.

🌙 July Reading List

(ambitiously long, lovingly chosen)

The Lighthouse Witches by C.J. Cooke (finished 06.07.25)
🌊 Salt wind, tangled myths, flickering truths
🫖 Seaweed green tea or briny Earl Grey

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
🕰️ In-between places, soft regrets, second chances
🫖 Chamomile with honey and lavender

The Power by Naomi Alderman
⚡ Electric futures, sharp truths, shifting balance
🫖 Strong black tea with cardamom

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow
🗝️ Thresholds, antique keys, ink-and-parchment wonder
🫖 Rosehip & vanilla rooibos

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
🌿 Quiet questions, overgrown paths, tea in tin cups
🫖 Mint and lemongrass blend

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett
🍃 Snow-crusted moss, stubborn scholars, fae secrets
🫖 Heather blossom and elderflower tea

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
🕰️ Clocks ticking backwards, elaborate masks, looping mystery
🫖 Classic English breakfast with a dash of something strange

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
✒️ Bitterness, ambition, ethical shadows
🫖 Burnt sugar oolong or smoky lapsang

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab
🖋️ Forgotten names, star-kissed loneliness, centuries of yearning
🫖 Blueberry and violet black tea

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman (revisit)
🌌 Childhood nightmares, mythic memory, moonlight on water
🫖 Licorice root and nettle

Babel by R.F. Kuang
📚 Silver-tongued magic, revolution, cold libraries
🫖 Earl Grey with bergamot and smoke

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
✨ Shadowed hallways, biting wit, ink-stained fingers
🫖 Smoky lapsang with lemon zest

Stardust by Neil Gaiman (revisit)
🌠 Falling stars, strange lands, love as adventure
🫖 Elderberry and blackcurrant

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (revisit)
🌿 Locked gates, blooming magic, quiet healing
🫖 Chamomile and rose

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna
🕯️ Candlelit kitchens, found family, soft spells
🫖 Gingerbread rooibos or cinnamon vanilla

Caraval by Stephanie Garber
🎭 Carnival illusions, glittering stakes, twisted enchantments
🫖 Cherry hibiscus or candy apple black tea

Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater
👗 Witty hearts, fae bargains, regency charm
🫖 Lavender Earl Grey with cream

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden
❄️ Snow-dusted folklore, hearthlight, ancient forest whispers
🫖 Spiced chai with oat milk

🔮 What are you reading this month?

If you've written your own list, or are just following the pull of one book at a time, I’d love to hear. Here’s to stories that shape us, soothe us, or spark something strange.

📖 Title: The Lighthouse Witches

✍️ Author: C.J. Cooke

🔮 First Impressions:
The book opens with fog and folklore, instantly unsettling in that delicious way where you’re not quite sure if you’re reading a ghost story, a time slip, or a whispered curse. It pulled me in like a tide—slow and strange and deeply magnetic.

✨ Mood:
Driftwood altars, storm-swept cliffs, witch-marks on stone, secrets steeped in brine

🍵 Tea Pairing:
Seaweed green tea with a drop of honey—earthy, saline, and just a little uncanny

🕯️ Spell Notes:
"We are the daughters of the storm, and we remember."

📚 Progress:
🖤 Started: 02 July 2025
🖤 Finished: 06 July 2025
🖤 Pages turned by candlelight: with salt on my skin and something ancient at my back

💭 Reflections:
This is a novel built on layers: present-day mystery, 17th-century witch trials, missing girls, and the way trauma echoes through bloodlines. The atmospheric writing absolutely shines—Cooke has a gift for making you feel the landscape, the chill, the ache of something just out of reach.

The shifting timelines and points of view are ambitious and mostly well-handled, though I occasionally found myself needing to pause and orient. The heart of the novel—mothers, daughters, and the legacy of belief—beats strong beneath the folklore and fear.

There are moments where the horror flickers too close, and others where it feels more speculative than supernatural—but that tension is part of the book’s haunting charm. A gothic lighthouse tale with teeth, tenderness, and a strange sort of hope in its bones.

Not flawless, but deeply compelling. It left salt in the corners of my heart.

"Somewhere, a moth is in love with a candle, and I understand her completely."

Summer arrives like a poem read aloud in a warm room—soft, golden-edged, a little too bright in places, and full of feelings. It’s the season of long glances and longer evenings. Of something almost happening.

💗 What I Love About Summer

🍓 Fruit warm from the sun.
Not washed, not perfect. Just plucked from a punnet or hedge, eaten on the walk home with juice on my hands. Strawberries taste like childhood. Blackberries taste like secrets.

📖 Reading outside until the pages glow.
When the wind turns them for me. When I have to anchor the book with a teacup. When the world hushes, and it's just me, the story, and the sky.

🕯️ Late-night candlelight and quiet music.
There’s something romantic about sitting alone with a candle at 10pm, writing into a journal as though it’s a love letter to the world. The air hums with stillness and possibility.

🌙 Midnight walks when everything is lavender.
That dusky not-quite-dark, not-quite-light. The sound of crickets or foxes. The scent of honeysuckle climbing someone else’s garden gate. Magic lives here.

💌 Letters written on soft paper.
Tucked into books. Left on doorsteps. Folded with care. There’s something about summer that makes me want to say too much, and mean all of it.

Summer is fleeting, but maybe that’s the point. Maybe the romance lives in the way it doesn’t last—the melt of ice cream, the blush of the evening sky, the goodbye at the end of the garden party.

Still, I fall for it every year.

What do you love most about summer? What sets your heart aglow?

"A journal is a lantern. What you write inside it glows."

The year turned quietly, didn’t it? We lit our candles, wrote our spells, and somehow, here we are—July. The second half of 2025 unfurling like a letter we forgot we wrote to ourselves. And now, it’s time to answer it.

✨ Goals for July (and beyond)

This month, I want to light my days with rituals, reading, and rest. Not grand revolutions, but small, steady embers. Here’s what I’m calling in:

🌿 Return to rhythm.
A gentle morning stretch. Journaling before the noise begins. Reading by lamplight instead of phone-glow. Not perfection—just presence.

📚 Finish a handful of books from my summer TBR stack. (No pressure, just pleasure. I’ll follow the story that speaks loudest.)

🔮 Create something each week.
A pressed flower page. A poem. A quiet spell scribbled in the margins. Art as a kind of breathing.

🕯️ Reflect at midpoint.
I’ll carve out one afternoon to revisit my intentions from earlier in the year. What’s shifted? What still calls to me?

💌 Write more letters— to friends, to my future self, to the day itself. Let the words be lanterns, too.

📖 A Second-Half Spell

If the first half of the year was all seed and soil, let the second half be bloom and balm. I want softness without stagnancy. Stillness without silence. Magic stitched into the everyday.

And you? What’s lighting you up this month? What are you planting for the rest of the year?

Let’s leave the door ajar for possibility.

📖 Title: The Night Circus

✍️ Author: Erin Morgenstern

🔮 First Impressions:
From the first page, it felt like stepping into a dream made of black velvet and silver thread. The prose unfurls slowly, luxuriously, like smoke curling from a candle. I expected mystery, a touch of magic, and I found both—though not always where I was looking.

✨ Mood:
Ink and fog, clockwork roses, distant music on the wind, monochrome dreams

🍵 Tea Pairing:
Earl Grey with lavender and a curl of lemon peel—old-world and just a little strange

🕯️ Spell Notes:
"The finest of pleasures are always the unexpected ones."

📚 Progress:
🖤 Started: 26 June 2025
🖤 Finished: 01 July 2025
🖤 Pages turned by candlelight: a hundred shadow-draped nights under a carousel moon

💭 Reflections:
This is a novel less about plot than presence. The Night Circus invites you into its world—the Cirque des Rêves—with its scented tents, impossible illusions, and ink-sketched rivals locked in a game neither fully understands. The atmosphere is everything here: lush, immersive, and almost hypnotic.

The romance between Celia and Marco simmers quietly beneath the surface, more like a shared fate than a traditional love story, and sometimes I wished for more immediacy, more heat to match the stakes. Likewise, the shifting timelines and perspectives were elegant, but occasionally disorienting—like losing your place in a maze made of mirrors.

But what Morgenstern does best is enchantment. You don’t so much read The Night Circus as wander through it with wide eyes, brushing your fingers along its silken edges. It lingers long after the final page, like the scent of caramel and smoke on your scarf.

Not a perfect book—but a beautiful one.

I’ve started keeping a small record of soft magic—nothing grand, just the quiet kind that slips through the day when you’re not quite looking. I call them “Three Quiet Spells from Yesterday.” They might be a feeling, a found thing, a flicker of something lovely and a little strange. Just a way to notice wonder more intentionally.

Some days they’ll come easily. Some days I’ll have to listen harder. Either way, I’ll leave them here—like petals between pages.

Yesterday felt like a story I might’ve dreamt. One of those quiet ones with no plot, just atmosphere and feeling—a hush in the air, a flicker in the corner of your eye. I wanted to hold onto the little bits of enchantment that slipped through, so I wrote them down:

🌙 I caught the moonlight in a glass bottle again—it shimmered just right this time.
🔮 A moth landed on my windowsill like it had a secret to share.
📜 I whispered a wish into a folded page and tucked it beneath my pillow.

Small magic. Still magic.
If you saw or felt anything strange and lovely, I’d love to hear about it.

A candle lit.
A book opened.
A spell softly spoken.

I’ve been thinking about the quiet magic of routine — the hush that falls when you prepare to read something beloved, or the way a flame flickers just so when you're alone with a story. It’s not a big ritual. Just a soft one.

This little quote has been lingering with me lately — like the echo of a page turning. I think it belongs on parchment, with pressed lavender nearby.

The light feels different after the solstice.

The longest day has passed, but the light still lingers — golden and thick as honey where it falls through the lace curtains. My reading nook, just beside the window, has shifted slightly since the solstice. The books have grown softer in tone, the teacups linger longer, and everything smells faintly of lavender and old pages.

On the nightstand:

A worn copy of The Night Circus, spine creased with affection
A pressed petal journal, tucked beneath a small stack of tea-stained letters
A bottle labeled moonlight (really: glitter, rosemary, and memory)
A beeswax candle, burnt low — I light it before reading anything sacred

I’ve draped a light scarf over the lamp to dim the glow — just enough to blur the edges of the room and let the stories speak louder. There’s rosemary in the window, for courage. A single moth-wing charm tucked into my current bookmark.

This is the season for slow enchantments. For books that whisper in silver. For reading with bare feet against cool floorboards while the sun dips low and the shadows stretch like ribbon.

If you visited, I’d make you lavender and vanilla tea, and let you choose a book from the shelf — any book that glows when you touch it.

I think this is my favourite way to mark the turning — quietly, with books and candles, with light that lasts just a little longer than it did yesterday

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Lila