As obsessed as I am with reading and knitting, all too often, knitting fiction piques my interest. I read The Friday Night Knitting Club last year, and was gifted with a copy of the sequel this Christmas. WARNING: If you have not yet read Friday Night Knitting Club, this review will contain spoilers.
Knit Two takes place five years after the end of Friday Night, and the members of the Club are still struggling to put the pieces of their lives back together after losing their beloved Georgia Walker. Dakota Walker, Georgia's daughter, is 18 now, brooding, restless, and hoping for a future where she isn't tied down to her mother's knitting store and legacy. Peri, the co-owner of the store following Georgia's death, struggles between her loyalty to the store and her desire to branch out with her own line of pocketbooks. Lucie discovers that her hasty decision to enter single-motherdom isn't as simple now, with a five-year-old terror and a booming career that takes her to Italy. Catherine, having left her vile husband, tries desperately to understand what is missing from her life as a wealthy divorcee. Elderly widower Anita has recently accepted a proposal from her boyfriend Marty, and must confront the naysaying of her angry sons while battling her own secrets. And ultra-feminist Darwin, a new mother to twins, attempts to balance life as a professor and as a mom.
The book is a page-turner, the characters lively, making you wonder what is going to happen next. But Knit Two lacks the story arc that made Friday Night the bestseller that it was. For the first 150 or so pages, there's plenty of build-up. And then, all of a sudden, half of the characters (Anita, Lucie, Dakota, and Catherine) are in Italy for various reasons, and the other three (I neglected to mention KC above, mainly because her main story arc, her battles with smoking and menopause, are the most forgettable of the book) are left behind and shunted to the side. Here is where I felt both Knit Two and Friday Night lost their appeal -- when the gang goes to a foreign country. The idea of a European trip in order to find oneself has been done to death, and going to Rome really doesn't bring any sort of spin to the book -- Jacobs could just as well have sent them all to Napa for the cultural differences that they experience in Rome.
The overwhelming grief over Georgia's loss -- five years later -- is also unbelievable. Dakota, of course, as Georgia's daughter, who was only 13 when she lost her mother, is the only one whose grief is understandable. She is still working through it, and at 18 still figuring out who she is. But the overwhelming apathy of James (Dakota's father) and Catherine was ridiculous. The part about them going out to dinner frequently and setting a place at the table for Georgia made me roll my eyes. And the entire community being obsessed with Georgia reminded me how skeptical I was of the obsession everyone had with Lorelei and Rory on "Gilmore Girls" -- does the entire world revolve around young, unfortunate, single mothers and their offspring?
The final chapter reminded me way too much of the "Sex and the City" films. Not everything is perfect -- but enough is. It was an enjoyable read, if one can get past the few eye-rolly chapters. I wish there had been more about Darwin. She was definitely my favorite character from the first book, and not enough was fleshed out about her in book two.
Rating: ***
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