The Broken Circle by Cheryl Potter

The Broken Circle is the first book in the "Yarns of the Knitting Witches" series.  A young adult series,  it explores the magic of knitting, and the women who make wondrous items.

Once upon a time there were twelve.  Twelve women who made magical knits with fiber dyed from special crystals.  But things have changed in the world.  When one of their decided she desired power more, she left the circle and stole some powerful crystals.  Now, magic is outlawed and the witches have been tracked down  because of their gifts.  But with the evil one coming from the South to try to find the famous crystal caves, the world is in need of the knitting witches more than ever.

I have to say that the children act more like adults than the adults do in this book.  It's somewhat surreal actually. You have Skye, who is more level-headed than her mother and less flighty and who tries to do the right thing along with her brothers.  But then you have some of the other witches who are more concerned with themselves than anything else.  I'm actually surprised that only one of them turned rogue since they all don't seem to care much about anything but their own power and influence.  It was like reading about a group of toddlers.  They were all varied in their personalities though, and it was the strange ones I found myself liking the best.  Ratta was prickly, but she had a little sense about her and truly cared for Mamie, the woman she took care of for so many years.    And Mae, although mad, probably had the clearest goals of any of the women.

The history of the knitting witches world was varied and interesting.  I like the concept of the crystals and dyes.  But there was so much of it that I didn't understand what was going on at all times.  The story started off slow, it took about a hundred pages to really get moving, and it was filled with a lot of information, but it seemed that there was just so much detail to the world that you never really knew all of it before it started becoming important.  Too many irons in the fire it would seem.  But it did draw you in and I wondered what would become of these witches and their knitting.  After all, there is still a special crystal to be found.  And the descriptions of the knitting were probably the best features of this book.  You could almost see what the author was describing and I'm glad she referenced where you could find some of the patterns.

Cute pictures, interesting story, just needs to be tied together a little bit better.  Three and a half stars for this book.  I would read the next book in the series.

**This book was received as a Free Advanced Reader's Copy**

The Broken Circle
Copyright 2013
361 pages