Great book, love this author and how they can keep my attention to the end! The plot is well developed, characters are believable and they obviously paid attention to detail to make the story worth your time to read.

Favorably reminiscent of Diana Wynne Jones' Chrestomanci novels and Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me. Bits of whimsey and humor lighten the suspense. I look forward to reading more from this author!

Kari Maaren ist ein kreatives Allround-Talent. Die Kanadierin schreibt Geschichten, zeichnet den Webcomic „It Never Rains” und komponiert Musik. Ihr musikalisches Schaffen ist leider nur wenigen bekannt, denn ihre Songs gehören zum Genre Filk. Filk ist an Folk angelehnt und behandelt Themen aus der Science-Fiction und Fantasy. Echte, unverfälschte Nerd-Musik. Yeah! Ich habe mir drei ihrer Stücke auf der Ukulele angehört: „Dear George R.R. Martin”, „Voldemort, I Wanna Be Like You” und „Everybody Hates Elves”. Die Lieder sind großartig. Ich habe mich köstlich amüsiert. Wirklich, hört mal rein. „Weave a Circle Round” ist Maarens schriftstellerisches Debüt. Es ist ein YA-Zeitreise-Roman ohne Liebesgeschichte, weil sie Liebesgeschichten als 14-Jährige schrecklich langweilig fand. Ich erhielt ein Rezensionsexemplar via Netgalley.

Eines Tages reißt ein lautes Krachen die 14-jährige Freddy mitten aus einem Streit mit ihrer cleveren kleinen Schwester Mel und ihrem tauben Stiefbruder Roland. Vor dem leerstehenden Nachbarhaus ist ein Umzugswagen gegen einen Baum gebrettert. Aus dem Unfallwagen klettern ein Junge in Freddys Alter und eine ältere Frau. Sie stellen sich als Josiah und Cuerva Lachance vor. Sofort spürt Freddy, dass ihre neuen Nachbarn speziell sind. Sie sind… exzentrisch. In ihrer Gegenwart scheinen die Gesetze der Physik und der Logik keine Gültigkeit zu haben. Nach einigen äußerst seltsamen Begegnungen ist Freddy fast entschlossen, ihr verrücktes Haus nie wieder zu betreten. Doch dann folgt sie Josiah durch eine Tür – und landet plötzlich im mittelalterlichen Schweden. Will sie wieder nach Hause, hat sie keine andere Wahl, als Josiah zu vertrauen. Ausgerechnet! Langsam dämmert ihr, dass Josiah und Cuerva Lachance nicht zufällig nebenan eingezogen sind. Wer sind die beiden wirklich? Was wollen sie von ihr und ihrer Familie? Und wieso steht die Realität Kopf, sobald sie in der Nähe sind?

Als ich den Klappentext von „Weave a Cirlce Round“ las, nahm ich aus irgendeinem nicht nachzuvollziehenden Grund an, bei den neuen Nachbarn der Protagonistin Freddy handele es sich um ein altes, kauziges Ehepaar. Ich war ziemlich überrascht, als sich mein Irrtum offenbarte. Was ihre Kauzigkeit betrifft, lag ich hingegen goldrichtig. Josiah und Cuerva Lachance sind nahezu aggressiv seltsam. Ihre Merkwürdigkeit ist aufdringlich; sie springt Leser_innen und Figuren gleichermaßen mit ausgefahrenen Krallen ins Gesicht, was die Autorin Kari Maaren wohl beabsichtigte. Niemand kann leugnen, dass mit diesen beiden etwas nicht stimmt. Cuerva Lachance, eine nominell erwachsene Frau, die darauf besteht, mit vollem Namen angesprochen zu werden, verfügt über die Aufmerksamkeitsspanne einer Eintagsfliege, gibt mitten in der Nacht dröhnende Orgelkonzerte und taucht ständig völlig unvermittelt auf. Sie ist immer irgendwie drüber und daneben. In ihrer Gegenwart scheint sich die Realität selbst zu winden. Josiah hingegen mag offiziell erst das Teenageralter erreicht haben, benimmt sich jedoch, als wäre er mit 45 auf die Welt gekommen. Er wirkt manchmal regelrecht suizidal, weil er in seiner drolligen, gespreizten Ausdrucksweise alles und jede_n beleidigt und provoziert – inklusive Lehrpersonal und Schulhofschläger. Dennoch mochte ich die beiden. Ich traute ihnen nicht, aber mich amüsierte es, dass sie ihre Skurrilität nicht zu kontrollieren vermochten, egal, wie sehr sie sich anstrengten. Sie können einfach nicht anders. Für die arme Freddy sind Josiah und Cuerva Lachance allerdings eine echte Herausforderung. Sie belagern ihre Familie: sie selbst, ihre kleine Schwester Mel und ihren Stiefbruder Roland. Tragischerweise sind ihre Eltern sowohl physisch als auch emotional in „Weave a Circle Round“ kaum präsent, was einige von Freddys ungesunden Verhaltensweisen erklärt. Es gefiel mir, dass Maaren diese gestörte Familiendynamik anspricht, ohne sie die Geschichte dominieren zu lassen. Es geht in diesem Buch nicht um Freddys Beziehung zu ihrer Mutter und ihrem Stiefvater. Es geht um sie und ihre Geschwister. Durch den mysteriösen Zeitreiseunfall verbringt Freddy mit Abstand am meisten Zeit mit Josiah und Cuerva Lachance. Obwohl sie während dieser Phase eine interessante charakterliche Entwicklung durchlebt, fand ich ihre Reise durch die Zeit leider recht langatmig. Für die schmalen Erkenntnisse, die sie gewinnt, ist dieser Part definitiv zu lang. Sie sammelt Hinweise auf die wahre Identität von Josiah und Cuerva Lachance, erhält jedoch kaum konkrete Antworten. Ich fühlte mich von Kari Maaren hingehalten und tolerierte die Verzögerung nur, weil ich ihre Herangehensweise an drohende Zeitreiseparadoxa herrlich mutig fand. Sie ignoriert sie schlicht. Sie leugnet, dass es Paradoxa geben könnte, weil die gesamte Situation ohnehin so unmöglich ist, dass Logik keine Rolle mehr spielt. Dieser erfrischende Ansatz passt vortrefflich zum Tenor von „Weave a Circle Round“, da das Buch das sensible Verhältnis von Ordnung, Chaos und Schöpferkraft diskutiert – auf verrückte, nerdige Art und Weise.

Ich mochte „Weave a Circle Round”. Es ist eine hübsche, geekige Geschichte mit nettem philosophischem Einschlag, die mich insgesamt gut unterhielt. Am Ende habe ich durchaus überlegt, was wohl aus den Figuren werden könnte. Das ist immer ein gutes Zeichen, weil diese Gedanken beweisen, dass sie mir nicht gleichgültig waren. Trotzdem hoffe ich, dass Kari Maaren der Versuchung einer Fortsetzung widersteht, denn meiner Meinung nach besteht der Reiz darin, es eben nicht zu wissen und die eigene Fantasie anzukurbeln, was ich als Intention der Autorin verstehe. Stattdessen drücke ich die Daumen, dass Maaren ihre schriftstellerischen Ambitionen weiterverfolgt, weil ich glaube, dass sie die kleineren Mängel, die ihr Debüt speziell in der Taktung aufweist, überwinden kann. Übung macht den Meister – wer könnte das besser wissen als eine Musikerin wie Kari Maaren?

Vielen Dank an den Verlag Tor Books und Netgalley für die Bereitstellung dieses Rezensionsexemplars im Austausch für eine ehrliche Rezension!

Strange and a bit hard to follow. I wanted to love this book, but in reality I wanted to give up on it the entire time I read it. I put it down several times thinking maybe I just wasn't in the mood for this type of book, but it never really measured up for me. I do appreciate the opportunity to read it, though.

Very solid time-travel story. No romance, so if you’re struggling to come up with a SFF title with zero kissing and zero pining, this is a good shout.

Thank you to Netgalley and Tor for giving me the chance to read an early copy for honest review. The cover and synopsis had me interested, very interested.
I thought that this was going to be a weird house book, or possibly a haunted house book, so I wasn't expecting what this book eventually delivered.
The most honest way I can describe Weave A Circle Round is odd, very, very odd. There were some funny bits with Cuerva Lachance and Josiah. There were some weird bits. There were some what is going on?!?! bits. It was just an odd book.
The middle part threw me off a lot. I'm not going to spoil anything. I think it's more fun to discover the surprise while reading, but I don't know if that surprise really worked for me. It was strange. It was jumpy. It could be a little difficult to follow at times. And it really just made me think, what's the point of all this. The ending was a little like that too. I just didn't necessarily get the point.
It was a fun read, kind of. It's not going to go down as my favorite book, but it will definitely go down as an interesting one that I remember.
Freddy as a character was kind of meh. I didn't really like how she was angry all the time. She kind of had a poor little ol' me attitude, which I wasn't a fan of. Cureva Lachance and Josiah were both touched in the head characters. Mel wasn't given the optimum amount of shine she deserved. I feel like she would have been fun to follow as a main character. Roland gets points for diversity, in that he's deaf, but he's kind of pushed behind Freddy too. Freddy just maybe wasn't the character that if I had the choice, I would have loved to follow.
Weave a Circle Round was definitely an interesting book. It wasn't what I was expecting at all. I think there are people out there that would love this kooky kind of story. It was an experience, for sure. A very odd experience.
BOOKCITEMENT LEVEL 3.3/5
Very Odd

What a fun book! I loved the narrative style and all of the quirky characters. This one reminded me a lot of A Wrinkle in Time, what with the kooky adults and precocious kids. I really loved the main character, I found her so relatable, both because she reminded me so much of what I was like as a teenager, and how brutally real her emotions were.

I would recommend this book to any bookish teenager looking for a fun fantasy read, or an adult who wanted to remember what it's like to struggle with magical chaos mixing with your regular life.

This is an adult/YA crossover fantasy novel, so it sounded right up my alley. Unfortunately, it was not engaging and I couldn't get into it.

This brief review appears on Goodreads, and I hope to write a longer and more detailed one for my blog in future (but university ate my brain).

This was an extremely baffling book: I spent a lot of it with very little idea what was going on. But for some reason I enjoyed it anyway. As one character says to the other, there's not a lot of point trying to make sense of time travel, as it only makes things worse -- once I gave up trying to figure out what was going on and just trusted that it would be explained eventually, I found it a lot more enjoyable. Though there's a fairly extended D&D metaphor which I think I would have appreciated more if I'd ever played any tabletop RPGs.

Weave a Circle Round was bizarre. And it was bizarre in the kind of way that I honestly can’t tell if it was good or bad, which is why I have no other option than to give it a middle-of-the-line rating of three stars.
Sure, it was engaging and went to a lot of unexpected places, but I do not know whether all those places were absolutely necessary. It was kind of a nonsense novel, sort of a more serious Dr Seuss, where it feels as though the author threw loads of unconnected and increasingly ridiculous things onto the page and then tried to make them all fit into a singular narrative.
The characters were strange, but I think the thing that stopped Weave a Circle Round from being an amazingly odd piece of literature instead of a uh-I-have-no-idea-what-is-going-on one, is the fact that the world-building sorely lacked. The main focus of this book is time-travel (is that a spoiler? I’m so twisted into knots by this book that I have no idea), and so it was essential that each period of time felt different and unique from all of the others, but I don’t feel as though this was the case at all. The readers instead received an incredibly small amount of detail about each and the book was instead far more focussed on the strangeness of the neighbours - another aspect of the novel that, even after finishing it, I still don’t really understand.
It feels so embarrassing to step back from a book and be like, “I don’t get it?” (especially when that book is aimed towards a younger age group) but I don’t. And maybe other people will and they will see nuance that I almost certainly missed, but I really need to hold my hands up on this one and admit that I have no clue. So yeah, Weave a Circle Round was fun, but it still was not the book for me.

This book is a great example of imagination. Exactly what I would expect from a book published by Tor.

Weave a Circle Round follows Freddy on her quest to be a normal teenager. New neighbours move in next door and everything begins to change.

This book is full of great things. There is time travel, verging on parallel universes, broken laws of physics and resourceful characters. I struggled with Freddy’s character in the beginning. She comes across as dim and shallow, but the dynamic of Josiah and Cuerva Lachance overwhelms my desire to intellect-up Freddy.

There are points to note. The beginning is slow. Like many debut novels, there is too much explaining. Stay with it until after the first third and you’re into wonderful imagery-full, artistic territory. The author lets go and the originality of the work comes through. You do have to be open to a style of writing as time travel would feel. One paragraph you’re in prehistoric China, next 17th century France. It can be hard to follow, but it ended in a place worth the initial effort. It reminds me of Vassa in the Night (another Tor Book) or Madeleine L’Engle or Ocean at the end of the Lane.

There has been a bit of debate about the genre of this book. Is it young-adult? I’m not sure. Or, in the spirit of the book, maybe I am. To me, this is more of a traditional YA. It’s not adult-young-adult novel with 16-year-old, girlfriend-chasing vampires or bloodthirsty underclasses. Freddy is fourteen years old. The eleven to thirteen-year-old version of me would love this book.

In all what this book is, messy. Messy (after the first third) in the best sense of the word. It then becomes the artistic, dramatic, rhythmical young adult book that I recommend.

I had to DNF this one. I tried coming back to it later to give it another chance, but no. This story was too all over the place. I felt just as lost as the main character as to what was actually happening. I found the characters to be flat and their motives non-existent.

WEAVE A CIRCLE ROUND by Kari Maaren offers an intriguing premise and received multiple starred reviews (from Kirkus, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly and School Library Journal). I certainly liked the cover and was excited to pick up this book. For me personally, however, this story did not click; I had trouble building empathy for the characters and found the pacing to be rather slow. It's meant to be a time travel tale involving pre-teen sisters Mel and Freddy, plus their deaf step-brother Roland and the rather strange duo Josiah and Cuerva Lachance who move in next door. Given the characters' ages and actions, I concur with the publisher that WEAVE A CIRCLE ROUND may appeal to the younger fans of Madeleine L'Engle, Diana Wynne Jones, and E. L. Konigsburg. 3.5 stars

Sadly I was not able to get into this book at all. A quarter into it, nothing has happened and I'm just confused and weirded out. The story very much reads like a middle grade, which would obviously be fine, if I hadn't expected a Young Adult. The characters are very flat and I'm not interested in reading about them.
I wanted this be exciting and intriguing but I'm not able to find anything of that in this book so far, so I decided not to finish it.

This might be the first ever Did Not Finish review on this blog! Normally I wouldn't post anything about a book I didn't finish, but I'm changing up things for a couple of reasons.

1.  I want to let the publisher know WHY I didn't finish it.

2.  Since I have a NetGalley copy, I want to be able to post something, especially since I'm working on getting my NetGalley stats up this year.

I only managed to get to 13% in my Kindle, and I feel bad that I didn't try a little harder, but here are the reasons I decided to stop reading:

Waaaaay too young and juvenile for me.
The writing style immediate felt more middle grade than young adult to me, and while I don't want to bash MG novels at all, I just have zero interest in reading books for that age group. Zero interest. So despite trying to slog through even more painful prose and immature shenanigans, I just decided to call it quits.

Waaaaay too silly for me.
In the vein of "too young" for me, the story was just ridiculous, and not in a "I love weird fiction" way at all. I struggled with the character's dialogue, I struggled with the characters' actions, and I struggled with the characters' situations. And this was all in the first 13%.

Didn't catch my interest.
I know that some stories take a little time to get going, and some of my favorite books have started slow and ended up being fantastic, but this time there was absolutely nothing that grabbed me, not a single character that I felt was worth following, and so I stopped reading. I honestly thought I'd take a break, read something else, and then come back to Weave a Circle Round, but I was never able to drum up enough enthusiasm to do that.

Too many other books that I want to get to.
Perhaps the biggest reason I'm moving on, there are just too many books waiting for me to read. Trying to finish a book you're not enjoying takes away from awesome books I could be reading right now.

Who knows, maybe I missed out on something wonderful, but based on a few reviews from trusted bloggers, I'm betting that this never would have worked for me, even if I'd stuck it out. And so, I've moved on. Many readers love this book, and it's received amazing blurbs from the industry, but it just wasn't for me.

Thanks to the publisher for supplying a review copy.

Have you ever posted a DNF review?

DNF @ 41%

I love complex, weird, interesting fantasy/sci-fi books. Want me to believe in aliens, time travel, fantasy worlds, etc no problem BUT, you must give me a construct in which your world stands on. I don't need every detail or a complete explanation; but I do need a bit of a frame for the type of story I'm getting into and where it might be headed.
I hate DNFing a book; but when I cannot come up with a single reason to keep reading and am dreading the book I know it's time to give up.

Fundamentally Flawed
Weave a Circle Round fails at a fundamental story requirement; setting up some sort of existence for our characters that gives something to build from. If you aren't going to give a setting that helps give a logic to the story then at least make your characters really interesting. Unfortunately the characters are just as flat and uninteresting as the non-existent plot.

I can follow a book for sometime that is failing at plot if I like the character(s) enough. Unfortunately Kari Maaren has not created any character that I cared about or was even intrigued by; including the crazy neighbours. They were all very generic, boring or otherwise unmemorable. Even our two weird neighbours, that seem to be the catalysts for everything that happens, weren't enough to keep me interested.

Missing Connections
At 40%+ of a novel I expect to have an idea about why things are happening or at least what is happening. Instead Maaren takes our main gal and sets her up for bullying at school; then suddenly she ends up in a Viking timeline with one of the crazy neighbours. Say um... what?!?

There is zero indication about why this has happened or what it even means. Meanwhile the boy/crazy neighbour is clearly a time traveler with some sort of psychic power and yet still nothing fits into anything. For me it felt like each piece of the puzzle was from a different puzzle entirely that would never fit together. And frankly even if they do by the end I just didn't care about our people, the time travel or even what made the neighbours so odd.

Overall
It's okay to take me on a wild fantasy ride but give me characters I can care about and some sort of pieces that appear to go together.
I believe this book needs some serious review by beta readers to work on capturing the attention of the reader and giving nuggets of information that might fit together or at least intrigue the reader into continuing to read.
It also needs some character help to make at least our main gal more relatable if not actually likeable.
It surprises me that TOR published this. They are usually a solid publishing house. Somehow this one slipped through the cracks and got published. They might do well to pull it back and try again.

Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.

This book took me a while to get through and unfortunately made it painful to read because it just was so slow.

This book started out slow for me. I liked the writing, though, and pushed on to see where it was going. I'm so glad I did because I eventually became invested and sped through the last half of the book. I experienced a little confusion, mostly during the time travel parts when I wasn't immediately aware that time had shifted. Overall, I enjoyed the cast of characters and came away quite satisfied with the ending.

This is a lovely, often lyrical, always entertaining journey through history and growing up. I loved especially how the characters evolved and grew. At the end, I was sad to be saying farewell to them.

This was such a wonderfully woven story of imagination, youth, growth, and mystery. The last time I read a young adult novel this well-told was from Ann Brashares, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. And I have to admit this story did remind me a great deal of one of my favorite Netflix shows, Stranger Things. In fact, I immediately began thinking of the show as I read this book.

Poor Freddy was in a dilemma of sorts. She’s growing up with all the pains that come along with it. Having a deaf brother who gets on her nerve and a bratty younger sister, was there any wonder Freddy found herself in a rut? Getting through high school was trouble enough, but Freddy couldn’t possibly have experienced trouble much like the kind she encountered by the two strangers who crashed into her neighborhood by total accident. Or was it an accident? One minute you’re fighting with your siblings and the next minute you hear what sounds like an explosion and when you go to investigate you find a truck smashed against a tree and two strange individuals arguing like they didn’t just end up in a car accident. Who the hell were these people and what on earth were they doing on Grosvenor Street?

Roland, Freddy’s brother, warned Freddy that their new strange neighbors were dangerous and to stay away, but why on earth would Freddy listen to what her brother had to say, right? Cuerva Lachance and Josiah weren’t exactly what we would call normal neighbors. In fact, they appeared, pardon the pun, to be a little out of this world. Hmm? Freddy ended up being schoolmates with Josiah, the young teen with a sharp tongue and quick-witted mind whom she absolutely abhorred more than her siblings and classmates. Josiah was able to say things and get her to say things that she wouldn’t normally think to say. In fact, every time Josiah was around, she managed to find herself in a heap of trouble. What was it about this young teen that caused so many problems for her, but managed to intrigue her at the same time? How is it Josiah knew things before she knew them and could make gravity do things that weren’t relatively possible?

Well, readers, you’ll have to read the story to find the answers to those questions. Maaren did a really great job weaving these characters into such a fantasy. I enjoyed their journey and investment in their lives to find out more about them. What a cute story. With all the serious reading that I do, it’s always fun to read something that goes outside the scope of what you’d normally read.

Mello & June gives Weave A Circle Round, four out of this world stars. Weave A Circle Round would make a great film. This novel would make a perfect gift for yourself or that young adult in your life. There are seven more days left to make your reading challenges, Intellectual Minds. Let’s make 2017 go out with a huge bang by finishing what we started at the beginning of the year. We have another year to do this all over again. We can do it! I have faith in you. Until next time, keep on reading!