stuff like this always makes me wonder what the book thinks it's doing.
Right!? I spent the entirety of the book up to that point suspecting that Lillian would Die Tragically during a dig (thus giving Mika an opportunity to teach the girls about Dealing Healthily With Grief and Appreciating Every Day) and hoping that Lillian wasn't actually neglectful, but had become an archaeologist to recover an ancient lost cure for witches being orphaned in childhood, at which point she'd return home in triumph to join the found family. Either of those outcomes would have made SO MUCH MORE SENSE than the direction Mandanna actually took things. Like, why go to all the trouble of adopting one child from a faraway, exotic land—let alone three—and painstaking concealing their existence when you don't even want children in the first place?

(The answer is because Mandanna thought this would up the stakes of Jamie's betrayal. But it's a massive tonal shift from everything that preceded it and Mika gets over it suuuper quickly given the gravity of the situation, and it just. Doesn't. Work.)

I'm only a chapter into Elder Race but so far I'm really enjoying it!