Monday, July 23, 2018

Review: Weave A Circle Round by Kari Maaren


Title: Weave A Circle Round
Author: Kari Maaren
Published by: Tor
Released: 2017
Source: Review Copy from Tor through Netgalley

Summary: Freddy, Roland, and Mel are part of a blended family struggling to get along. Freddy is mad at everyone and everything. Roland is deaf and loves playing Dungeons & Dragons. Mel is a genius for her age and far more curious than she should be. Their parents are never around and they do their own things.
The three of them get brought together when some weird neighbors move in behind them. Josiah and Cuerva Lachance. Cuerva Lachance is a nutball. Everything she does is unexpected, and she seems to pop up in places she shouldn't be able to. Josiah is more level-headed, but still extremely strange. He ends up becoming a classmate of Freddy's, much to her dismay. Josiah seems determined to piss off every teacher, get beat up by all the bullies, and make the whole school think that he and Freddy are friends. This makes it very hard for Freddy to fade into the background at school.
Not only are the neighbors weird, but the house they are living in is too. 
When curiosity gets the better of Freddy, Mel, and Roland, they get sucked into something they never expected, and really never wanted either. It's a strange world.
My Thoughts: 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

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