Weave A Circle Round
Kari Maaren
Freddy wants desperately to not be noticed. She doesn’t want to be seen as different or unusual, but her step-brother Roland gets attention because he’s deaf, and her little sister Mel thinks she’s a private detective. All Freddy wants to do is navigate high school with as little trouble as possible. Then someone moves into the house on Grosvenor Street. Two extremely odd someones.
My Rating:
Ragtag, eccentric siblings find themselves embroiled in the struggle between Chaos and order in Kari Maaren’s debut novel, Weave A Circle Round.
Freddy Duchamp has never really understood where she fits in, and things only get worse with the return to school, officially a high schooler, to discover the friends she did have seemingly grew up over the summer. Now abandoned, she lives by the mantra, just keep your head down and go unnoticed, which seems feasible, given her mother and stepfather are often MIA. While her lumbering stepbrother makes a mess of things and brainy little sister continuously finds ways to get under her skin, Freddy’s world turns topsy turvy when the new neighbors move in.
Josiah and Cuerva Lachance (always Cuerva Lachance and never just Cuerva) are more than odd, their screwball crazy. When Josiah ends up attending not only her school, but almost all her classes, the notion of slipping through the world unnoticed gets blown out of the water. Josiah, ever determined to provoke attention and anger at every turn, wiggles his way into the Duchamp siblings lives. Meanwhile, Cuerva Lachance collects chairs and spider plants in ridiculous amounts.
Something is afoot, and Freddy finds herself transported through time, with Josiah for company. She soon learns that they are immortals; Josiah being Order, Cuerva Lachance is thus aptly named Chaos. A young adult fantasy that does not include over-romanticized paranormal teens, or fight to the death battles in some distantly bleak future might not do it for some. But Weave A Circle Round offers realism to the characters making it a wild ride through myth and time, which does wonders to renew the YA genre.
It is silly and sophisticated, it provokes thought and promotes individuality. Freddy uncovers the truth about herself and the person she truly wants to be. Her growth is something Maaren handles deftly and without shoving it in the readers face. Weave a Circle Round can become a timeless classic in the vein of A Wrinkle In Time. It’s beautiful and silly and worthy of finding a place on any ‘to read’ pile.
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