Special This PerfectBound e-book contains Part One of an interview with author Isobel Bird. With this ribbon I do bind My heart to yours and yours to mine. Love, I call you, come to me, As is my will, so mote it be. Kate cast the love spell with results unforeseen.She cannot stop it by herself, but the book of spells tells her of two strangers who can help her -- if only she can find them.
TBH I'm pretty sure I read this as a kid to get ideas for spells and rituals.
What can I say? I was a weird kid. It's not like I actually cast any spells. Just owned a bunch of candles and stuff. I didn't get too far into the series, because my interest in Wicca was fleeting.
It was a pretty good story, though. A unique angle for high school drama.
This series is not all I hoped it to be. There are quite a few subliminals on trends for today. The storyline seems fairly decent, but a person can only take so much of those lines in between like "Ooo! Isn't this dress great! It makes me look just Britney Spears!" and "No, no. Green certainly isn't your color. You don't want to look too much like Christina Aguilera." I did, however, enjoy about 50% of the story...and I like that a fair amount of truth with Wicca came out in this book. (i.e.:Maypole Festivities). If you're looking for a really great new series of books based on Paganism/Wicca or supernatural, the I'd suggest Cate Tiernan's SWEEP series books.
I want to read this so bad but I can't find it anywhere RIP.
Literally me 2 seconds later: nvm I found it on iBooks.
I've been feeling extra nostalgic lately and I wanted to read this series so much. I read Through The Veil years and years ago. I didn't realise it was part of a series when I bought it but I remember really liking it back then.
This series certainly have great premises. I just really like the idea of girl friendship and Witchcraft. It makes me think of Charmed, Buffy, and the whole 90s getups. Will try to find the second book now!
Me encantan las historias de magia. Esta es particularmente interesante porque vemos el proceso interno de Kate quien quiere explorar el mundo de la hechicería pero tiene miedo a renunciar a su vida normal. Me gusta como muestran a la brujería y a los aquelarres. Lo devoré y me sentí volver a mí infancia o preadolescencia...
Re-read in 2020: Okay, so my opinion changed a lot after 10 years. This book is actually a pretty wholesome book. Ofc it's not accurate, it's not meant to be. It's meant to be a fiction work. But even for a fiction work, it does get lots of point rights. And it's so cute to see teens just learning about Wicca and learning about the Craft and starting to walk the path.
I think it's a really nice chill book, especially for teenagers. And honestly, I loved re-reading it! :)
So Mote it Be was an extremely interesting book that intrigued way too much due to the amount of cold and flu medicine I was on. That being said my buddy read comment may or may not make sense (SORRY Book!). That being said, this review may or may not make sense as well... because of that said medicine that I'm still on. Let's do this!
Okay so this book is about Kate Morgan who is a 16 year old girl and a basketball player. She get's assigned a term paper about the witch trials that happened in the 17th century for one of her classes which leads to all of this magic stuff happening throughout the book. At times I was confused because I thought I was reading some stuff wrong or maybe I just missed something on accident.. but in the end I just kind of rolled with it and blamed on the medicine, sneezing, and overall feeling like crap.
Overall, I still don't know how I feel about Kate's character. Yeah she was head over heels over a stupid boy. Then she started to kind of ditch her friends. Then she started to dabble in magic. THEN she started to ruin a lot of things and then try to make everything better. It was entertaining to say the least but the end kind of confused me. I definitely think I skimmed over something or just misread something because if Sherrie is evil then I don't know what is right in the world anymore. Yeah she's cold and weird towards the end.. and kind of annoying and mean.. but ugh my mind was a little blown at the last page.
Well, now I'm hooked and dying to know what the hell is going on and what the hell is going to happen in the next book. I am going to search high and low, on kindle of course, and find this freaking book and READ IT DAMMIT!
I'm sick.. I have nothing else to do but read and sleep.
okay so maybe a little bit of the rating is t nostalgia i felt reading this book for the first time in 10+ years again.
i LOVED this series as a child, (and i mean child because i was 10? then i read this maybe 11, which i guess is not the typical age range but i just loved this series!) and reread it ... a lot! it’s one of the few books that actually have wear and tear because it really was just read too much to not show it.
and i think it actually stands up pretty well.
sure there where the typical younger YA book tropes of wanting the popular sport player boy to notice the not as popular girl. we had the overly girl typical group that loved to gossip and but apparently loved each other but then turn around and bad mouth the some girl out of their group. and at least a few more.
but you know what? i still enjoyed this for what it is.
it’s well written. it as a nice dynamic of different characters and different family situations. it has nice family dynamics! siblings like each other and kids enjoy spending time with their parents! i also found the whole magic bits as funny as i remember finding them as a kid.
i think that if you read this either as a kid or as an adult this series olds up. it’s fun. it’s easy to read but has pretty nice topics and messages but it also doesn’t focus on it and this still just entertaining and fun.
i defiantly recommend this if you can find it and get your hands on the series? so worth a read!
It's the first book, so I'll give it some slack. That said, it was written decently for a teen novel. What was disappointing was how generic the story seemed. It is basically every romance/wicca tale you have ever heard of. Girl sees boy. Boy doesn't notice girl. Girl discovers magic. Etc. It was alright but very very generic as a plot. I feel like I've read/watched this very thing unfold a thousand times.
Over all I like it for what it was, considering there don't seem to be many books of this sort around. I'm a fan of coming of age stories in general. This certainly isn't anywhere on the level of Cate Tiernan's Sweep series, but it's not terrible. I'm already into book 2 and finding myself somewhat interested.
There isn't anything particularly shocking that happens in my opinion, hence the 3 stars. But, the generosity of the stars is based on the fact that the writing, while referencing pop culture a couple times here or there, wasn't actually all that bad for what this is. It could use a bit more emotion, a bit deeper character development, and a few more twists to the plot.
Kate Morgan, a 16-year-old, popular basketball player, is assigned a term paper on the witch trials of the 17th century. Amongst the pile of books she checks out of the library, she finds an actual spellbook. Skeptical at first, she decides to try a love spell to attract the football-playing senior of her dreams. When the spell goes haywire -- earning her the attentions of every guy in school and the ire of all their girlfriends -- she begins wishing that magic wasn't real after all.
Out of desperation, she discovers who checked out the spellbook before her, revealing two unlikely allies -- science whiz Annie Crandall and punk rocker Cooper Rivers. As they work together to undo Kate's spell, Kate finds herself questioning everything about her world and is faced with a choice -- to leave magic behind completely, or to pursue this new path and see where it leads.
This book is a solid introduction to a wonderful series. Admittedly, on its own it has its flaws -- a lot of the secondary characters feel like stereotypical "high school students". However, the injection of Wicca and magic spices it up enough to keep the reader interested. By the end of the book, we se all three girls make small but cruicial steps towards growth and self-discovery that make the rest of the series worth reading.
Circle of Three is unique in that it's probably the most realistic series we'll review here. Isobel Bird wrote the books specifically to show the real world of Wicca. And while some of the books dip into the more explicitly supernatural (book 3 Second Sight, book 5 In the Dreaming, book 11 The House of Winter), it basically takes place wholly in the real world and showcases actual Wiccan practices.
Sadly, the series is out of print. However, the fansite Enter The Circle has a good rundown of all of your purchase options on their "Buy the Books" page. And you can read an excerpt on the HarperCollins website.
This book sadly wasn't as good as I remembered it but since that was almost 15 years ago I'm not really surprised.
What drew me to this years ago was Wicca and since I have lost interest in that this book wasn't as 'magical' to me anymore. :P
I like Kate. She wasn't a great character but she wasn't bad. Just average. It took me a long time to figure out that Annie was one of the other three MC's so I'm a bit concerned about that. :S
I found Annie to be a really good character though. She reminds me a bit of myself and of Tris from Tamora Pierce's books which is my favorite character.
I like that Scott still likes her.
I'm glad that ALMOST everything went back to normal. :)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
This book is amazing. Im complety hooked on the series. Found it at my local indepedent bookstore and its great. I love the mixture of Wicca nd romance that this book has. This book may have been written for young adults but it sitll has me hooked.
Well it ain’t Sweep. Definitely more middle grade than that series. Though I think this was classified as YA back in 2001.
Took me awhile to get into it. The beginning is boring run of the mill teen drama. The witch stuff doesn’t really start until about 40-50% in when the main character Kate meets her two other witch friends and they form a coven. One is a book smart loner and the other is a “rebel” girl who plays guitar and has pink hair. Like a sanitized version of The Craft movie.
There’s a lot of early 00s mean girl energy especially with Kate’s frenemy Sherrie. Kate herself is very wishy washy and such a Mary Sue. “Typical” teen girl of the day who really cares about popularity, fitting in, and what her “frenemies” think.
The plot revolves around a Valentine’s Day dance where the couples have to dress up as famous couples. There’s a dance committee and they get to miss a day of school to decorate the gym. So much effort/time spend on a school dance. This would never happen today.
There’s also some early 00s pop culture references (Titanic, Martha Stewart, CDs, Shakespeare in Love, Stevie Nicks, Xena, Britney Spears, Jennifer Love Hewitt) which will annoy some readers but I loved this aspect. Love the nostalgia. That’s why I read these books.
The romance/love interest Scott was very superficial. It was like some DCOM. Most of the time Kate forgot he even existed. 😂 And she only liked him because he was “hot.”
Isobel Bird is a pen name for a gay man. Which I’m kinda surprised about but then I’m not because there was so much mean girl bitchiness content.
There’s a fun witch store called Crones’ Circle 😂 and Kate gets a tarot reading.
I like how they compared casting spells/sending out energy to praying. It’s really not that different.
The late 90s and early 2000s went through a very weird period where a slew of occult, mostly Wicca/witchcraft-themed books aimed at teenage girls came out. Most of them were ~real~ magic, some made vague stabs at actual Wiccan practices, and almost all of them were pure 90s camp. Circle of Three looks vaguely familiar - possibly listed in a much-paged listing of books available through the Scholastic book fair at school - and have the same terrifically dramatic covers that bring nostalgic delight to anyone who read Animorphs or T*Witches growing up.
So Mote It Be is one of the ones that actually made an actual go at Wicca, which is appropriate considering the author's background. The story follows Kate, an athletic, popular girl who finds a book of actual witchcraft through her school library. She tries one of the spells to attract her crush to ask her out - and it works! But things start backfiring in strangely anti-climatic ways and so she seeks out two others at the school who checked out the book: Annie, the straight-laced nerdy one and Cooper, the rebellious one. Together they band together to try and undo the spell before it backfires even more, and in the process, learn about each other and Wicca.
The characterization is weak. When I say "Cooper, the rebellious one" and "Kate, the athletic popular one", this is because that's pretty much all there is to their characters. Cooper at least has some vague leanings toward a sarcastic nature, but Kate has all the emotional depth of a teaspoon. Annie is bland and in the background most of the time, only appearing when Kate needs an actual brain cell to figure something out.
The magic isn't exactly ambiguous either. Most books of this genre either commit fully to magic is totally real and does amazing things or the subtle could be magic/could be coincidence. This book can't really make up its mind. On the one hand, it's pretty clearly spelled out (sorry for the pun) later in the series that Wicca isn't a magic wand and money isn't going to appear out of the sky, but then the love spell that goes awry has every boy in school campaigning to be Mr. Kate Morgan.
The writing is about typical for a fluffy book aimed at the 13-15 year old crowd, leaning toward bad (laughed meanly, really?) but mostly harmless.
Overall, this is typical of the period, and that's probably why I love it so much. This review has told you about the two-dimensional characters, the wild swinging between faith and magic-wand-waving, and the writing being about on par with the teeny-bopper crowd, and yet, it's exactly that which makes it so damn good. For those who remember those Scholastic book fairs fondly, for those who watched Charmed when their mom wasn't around, So Mote It Be will find a fond place in their hearts for all its campy, cheesy, Wiccan goodness.
Solid book, and it's obvious that the author has done some real studying of witchcraft and is likely a witch herself. There's some real knowledge in this book.
I like how she started the story off with a beginner witch, i.e. a baby witch, doing a love spell. Let's hope it taught some baby witches out there that love spells are never a good thing as they take away another person's free will and can backfire big time. Self-love spells is the way to go!
Why 3 stars?
A couple of things.
Firstly, the main character, Kate, is rather selfish. I didn't see much actual growth in her character.
Secondly, some mixing up of terms.
They said Wicca is a practice and witchcraft is a religion. That a person from any religion can be Wiccan. Now, they do use different terms throughout the book, but here's the real thing:
Wicca is a religion. You can't be of another faith/religion, and at the same time call yourself a Wiccan. On top of this, not all Wiccans are witches, so not all of them practice witchcraft, although they most commonly do.
Witchcraft, on the other hand, is a practice, one that can be done no matter which religion you belong to, and many people across the world are indeed doing magick without even realising it. And yes, Christian witches are indeed a thing that exists!
Okay book, shows what NOT to do as a baby witch, but the main character didn't grow much at all, so I'm afraid I won't really be continuing this series.
I am gonna be getting another witchy novel in the post next week or so, and I expect that one's gonna be all I wanted!
~ Eun
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Primo libro della saga Il cerchio delle streghe. Kate ha quindici anni e vorrebbe uscire col bello della scuola. Il suo insegnante di storia le assegna una relazione sulla caccia alle streghe e si ritrova a leggere un libro di incantesimi. Prova a farne uno per far innamorare Scott, per gioco. Il giorno successivo non solo Scott la invita al ballo di San Valentino, ma anche molti altri ragazzi si accorgono di lei. Kate è stupita, e vuole provare a fare un altro incantesimo, per migliorare i suoi voti in chimica. Prende un voto molto alto. Cominciano i guai: le sue amiche e le altre ragazze della scuola sono invidiose e arrabbiate con lei. Kate decide di rivolgersi alla secchiona della classe, Annie, visto che ha letto lo stesso libro. All'inizio titubante, Annie accetta di aiutare Kate ha fare un contro incantesimo per far tornare le cose alla normalità, ma ciò non succede. Decidono così di rivolgersi a Cooper, una ragazza introversa e antisociale. Riluttante, le accompagna alla libreria Wicca della città. Insieme fanno un incantesimo che riporta le cose alla normalità.
So, I remember reading this originally when I was in middle school or early high school. I remember pretty much loving the crap out of it.
It popped back into my head pretty recently, realized it was available online and I reread it. To begin, it's not nearly as bad as I initially feared; however, it's not nearly as good as I remember either.
Overall, it's a really thinly veiled intro to Wicca. The practice and information is all pretty legit, but it all feels very stilted and a bit clinical for it. In response to the witchcraft/occult craze in media in the late 90s (e.g. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed), this is much more true to life and ultimately appropriate.
Perhaps we are exchanging authenticity for spook factor? That being said, it's very much watered-down Charmed of Buffy. Things are very tame, very rosy. I can see why the book appealed to young me. I'm a sucker for the genre in general. It hit all the nostalgia factors for me, though. And I totally just read it one sitting, so there's that.
i read these when they were coming out but never finished the series - it went off the shelves kind of quickly. got a pile of them from eBay and just started a re-read. ok so far! the high school stuff is whatever, but i do remember these books as being a kind of fun intro to witchcraft so that's why i wanted to re-read them.
i would also like to add that there is no way a librarian would give out circulation history lol especially to a student
Ein sehr unrealistisches Buch, aber vielleicht hat es mir deshalb auch so gut gefallen... :) this book is very unrealistic but it is because of that,that made The book so good. :) lot of magic in the book.The book is about a girl at School and she wants that the boys should fall in Love wit her.But IT does not happen so she learns to use magic to get what she wants.
As the first, this was a great beginning to a popular series of books, following the emergence of three young novice witches as they try to find their way and grow confident of their new craft. I loved it actually and it is a very fast read. Highly recommended to all fans of the supernatural genre.
I saw these books around when I was little but I never picked them up. With the advent of ebooks I was able to read this without having to go searching for it and boy was I glad! “So Mote It Be” is the perfect mix of witchy-ness and high school that I have been craving lately. I definitely plan on buying book 2 as soon as possible.
I totally get where my 14-year-old self really liked this book the first time I read it... reading it now obviously I see the flaws but at its heart I still see how it can really capture a young person's mind. Although the plot sometimes is very problematic and I realize how much people's attitudes have changed even since I was in junior high in high school.
Went in with average expectations, and it turned out to be a nice page-turner that I read in one sitting . Will be reading this series until the plot turns me off, which it so far hasn't, except: did Kate ever write that essay that she was assigned??
I read this series when I was a teenager and was obsessed with Wicca. I wish I could remember how old I was exactly but I don't. I have very fond memories of devouring these books and I definitely remember reading up to book 11 but I can't remember if I ended up finishing the series.