Review by Booklist Review
When a strange woman in the park offers her a key, it presages peculiar things to come for 10-year-old Freddy. And come they do four years later when a surpassingly strange woman named Cuerva Lachance and a boy named Josiah, who hotly insists that Cuerva is not his mother, move into the equally strange house next door. Before you can say how odd, Freddy finds herself transported in her new neighbors' company back in time to ninth-century Sweden. Then it's on to Iron Age China and then to sixteenth-century France and then, well, you get the idea. We're clearly hip deep in a time-travel novel with all the conventions, challenges, and charms of the genre. There are perhaps fewer paradoxes than usual, but to make up for it there are a host of perplexing occasions that invite head-scratching questions. Who, for example, is the person called Three? Why does Josiah develop a doppelgänger? Who or what is Cuerva? Tantalizing questions to hold readers' attention to the end of this intriguing exercise.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this dazzling debut-a love letter to history, legend, and the power of stories that takes inspiration from Norse myth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge-a young woman is catapulted through time and space after she runs afoul of her eccentric neighbors. Fourteen-year-old Freddy Duchamp isn't sure what to make of her abrasive, rebellious classmate Josiah or the mercurial Cuerva Lachance, who claims to be a private investigator. When Freddy and Josiah fall through a time portal, it's the start of a fanciful odyssey through the past and future. As they encounter numerous versions of Josiah and Cuerva, who appear to represent order and chaos, Freddy realizes that she or one of her siblings might be the third in their eternally reoccurring trio, destined to tip the balance between opposing forces and influence a story as old as human civilization. This is an ambitious, intricate, joyful coming-of-age tale, with memorable characters and a powerful sense of wonder. Agent: Monica Pacheco, McDermid Agency. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Like any teenager with an eccentric family, Freddy Duchamp just wants to get through high school as an ordinary student, but her precocious little sister Mel, who wants to be a detective, and deaf stepbrother Roland, who's a huge geek, aren't much help. However, when a van crash next door leads them to meeting their new neighbors Cuerva Lachance and Josiah, any attempt at normalcy gets thrown out the window. Even odder is their house, just barely larger than a TARDIS (the time-traveling machine of the British Doctor Who), which suddenly whisks Freddy away with the neighbors-thousands of years into the past. Maaren's characters are by turns charming, annoying, and frequently hilarious. The quick pace and dialog may remind readers of Madeleine L'Engle or Jasper Fforde, making the protagonists timeless in their own way. VERDICT With definite YA crossover appeal but enough action and intrigue for adults, Maaren's enchanting debut is for anyone who enjoys stretching their imagination or is nostalgic for their teenage years.-KC © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
