Representation: N/A
Trigger warnings: Disappearance of a father, death of parents, near-death experiences, blood depiction, car crash
Note that I bought this book, and now I own it.
Score: Seven points out of ten.

A few months back, I bought this book at a second-hand market, but after, I forgot about it for a while; now, after reading a wild ride of a sci-fi YA book, I picked up this novel, cracked it open and read but honestly this was only an OK book; I enjoyed it I nitpick what I read most of the time, and I found issues which I'll get to later. Where do I begin? It starts with the main character Hannah Rose Brown, or Hannah for short, and she lives in Australia until she notices that she is a Lady who is part of some family dynasty thing, so she has to move to Scotland, which is thousands of kilometres away and stays there for most of the book.

That is where I discovered that when I look at the book objectively, I see several problems. Problem One: The first half is incredibly tedious to read (almost) 200 pages of nothing. Nothing except seeing Hannah live her new life, and it would've been better if she was more fleshed out, but the way the author wrote this part dragged the entirety of it down and therefore decreased my enjoyment of it. Problem Two: Then there's the time travel, and I will pick this apart here; for starters, the concept isn't even that original since the last book I read had the same notion, only this time, the book deals with it differently. So there's a puzzle ring in pieces. Hence the title. Hannah found them all for the sake of travelling back to 1567 in the time of Queen Mary, however... If Hannah can travel to that time, then how can she not travel to other years since the only restriction is that she can only time travel during particular days? Otherwise, she would be stuck there at that time.

Problem Three: The historical aspect is passable, however... The fantasy aspect is just lacking, and the book mentioned the Seelie and Unseelie courts, with the former liking order and the latter liking chaos, which somehow is connected to palindromes, so I guess that makes sense in a way with things such as 21/12 and the name Hannah being palindromic. What was the point of going to that time, other than to let Hannah be ungrateful for getting porridge and being rather outspoken and even defiant? The side characters were in the background, and I'm not sure why they're even there except for the plot's sake. Toward the end of the book, Hannah time-travels back to the present day, and she has this special Hag-Stone from before, which gives her special powers and essentially becomes the "Chosen One." But even with that, she still could not defeat the antagonist, so she got someone else to magically bind her to a mirror, dump it in a lake, and that's it. On a side note, the author's notes were a nice touch. ( )

Review by Karen Simpson Nikakis:
This book has the most luscious, satiny cover, which encloses a delightful story, aimed at the younger end of a young adult readership, but thoroughly enjoyable nevertheless for someone of my more mature years.
The relationships between the four main characters, whose 13th birthdays fall within days of each other, are sensitively drawn, and the descriptions of the Scottish countryside, both in the real world, and in faerie, made me want to rush out and buy a one-way ticket there. Burn’s tinkle and snow glimmers on the crags, but it’s a harsh landscape, especially in Mary Queen of Scots time, where Hannah must lead her friends to break the curse on her family and reclaim her long lost father.
The parts of the narrative set in 1567 have a firm sense of the authentic, from the chamber pots being tipped from windows, to the endless diet of variations on porridge the poor subsisted on. Hannah’s left-handedness brands her as a witch, and the power of superstition, combined with the wild beauty of the landscape, renders the transition to the faerie realm easy to accept. A great read.