Friday Night Knitting Club

I jumped back into my reading spree by listening to Friday Night Knitting Club. I had this detailed review all planned out, but frankly, I'm not going to get a chance to flesh it out until after my exams, and frankly, I'd rather just get this done and not worry about it. So, a brief summary of my impressions on this book: this was okay, mindless reading, great for when you need to unwind. There was a lot I disliked about this book, but it was an entertaining and engaging piece of fluff. Spoilers and more details are below the cut.

(2/5 stars)

• First annoying part of this book: characters of non-white ethnicity are either referred to as having "cafe au late" or "mocha" skin. Um. Really? How cliche (and uninformative) can you get? This just screamed of badly written romance novels and was insulting to boot. If she's going to comment on their skin color, the least she can do is describe it properly.



• The book should have been divided into two. It was like two giant Lifetime movies squashed into one book. It was almost as if the author wrapped up Georgia's plot, then realized she had left the other characters hanging in the middle of theirs, so she threw in this plot that came to mind: overcoming an illness. Which leads me to my next point...



• I disagreed with this so hard, as did the Knitmore Girls in their review. The author hit one below the belt by using cancer as punishment for the main character being happy. Georgia gets her happy ending, and instead of wrapping up the book as should be, she's struck down with a terminal illness in the peak of her success. This isn't Beaches, bitch! The goal is NOT to put down this book and be depressed, the goal is to smile at the happy ending. Maybe the author had greater literary ambitions (since it seems the goal of most "literature" to torture their protagonists as much as possible and make the novels are depressing as can be) and didn't realize that 99% of her book lands into chick lit fluff category. I don't know, but it felt really, well, wrong to add on the cancer. I think I would have had significantly less problem with the book if it had been separated into two. The first, the light and fluffy relationship drama that starts this book. The second, the sadder, more realistic cancer battle against cancer.



• Oh boy. Lucie's pregnancy. That was so... wrong. SO wrong. I disagreed with Lucie so much on her contraception method that it made it excrutiating to read her story line. I just cannot believe any intelligent person would condone such dishonesty irresponsibility. Lucie doesn't want a baby daddy? Sure, that's fine. Lucie is going to have a baby despite creating financial instablity? Okay, she thought it out at least. Lucie is going to purposely knock herself up without disclosing it to her partner? Not fine. Especially since she refused to let the father even know he was going to have a child. He was the child's parent too, and had a right to know. Ugh.



• I'm not sure in what universe 13 year old girls act like Dakota, but it certainly isn't mine. My baby sister was less annoying at eleven than this girl supposedly is at thirteen. The hyperactivity, the weird obsession with creating a baking business, it all screamed more childhood than teenager. Same with the running away. Dakota should have been aged down to turning ten or eleven, not thirteen. Every time she entered the room, I just cringed and how unbelievable she was.



• Okay, this one will probably get some disagreements, but I had a huge problem with the characters forgiving cheating. Georgia and Dan both forgave their cheating significant others (and so did Kat- it seemed like she left Adam more because she wanted a job than the fact that he treated her like garbage...). I'm sorry, but if Monkey ever cheated on me, I sure as hell wouldn't forgive him. I'd go all Lorena Bobbitt on his ass. Alright, I probably wouldn't actually cut off anyone's genitalia, but I certainly wouldn't forgive them. To completely disregard your relationship and significant other like that speaks to a lack of respect and love that I wouldn't want to be in a relationship with. I found it incredibly demeaning to the significant others, especially since they let in their cheaters without any real repercussions or discussion (James basically said "I'm really really sorry" and Georgia forgave him. Bletch).



• On one hand, the knitting analogies at the beginning of the segments were cute. On the other hand they were cliched. I think they were important for this book, but they got a bit silly at times.



• Adam was so unbelievably badly written, He was like a baddie from a kid's story. There was no real insight into his character, and he was entirely one note. His dialogue was also so incredibly cheesy that I wanted to throw the book across the room. I'm not asking for him to have a change of heart, or show a soft and squishy side, but people have more than one dimension!



• I wanted more information and story lines from other characters. Especially Anita- she never really got a resolution or a proper development of her problems. She was just a magical fairy godmother without nearly enough attention.



• And finally, who the hell wants to wear a knitted evening gown? I'm just shuddering at the thought. Given the book's description, the knit fabric wouldn't have enough structure to be in the shape it supposedly was.

While I didn't hate this book, I'm finding that more and more, major plot points are upsetting me. I disagree on a moral level with them, so I'm finding it hard to remember why I liked this book to begin with. And I did like this book as I was reading it. The characters (mostly) were interesting and engaging. Darwin in particular, I was able to relate to. But again, my personal morals interfere with me really actually liking this book.
(2/5 stars)