Knit Two Together

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Knit Two Together is a wonderful book where not a lot goes on, but what happens comes out of well-drawn characters. It is a joy to read and my first DIK in a while.

Libby Cambridge thinks she has the perfect marriage and at age forty looks forward to watching her teenage daughter grow up in the dream home she shares with husband Greg. In one afternoon her entire world dissolves when her husband tells her that he is in love with another lawyer in his firm who also is pregnant with his child.

Libby feels completely betrayed, divorces him, and decides to move to into an apartment in Cleveland over a yarn store that had been owned by her late mother. This choice gives her a dual dose of emotional baggage. First, her daughter Meghan hates the move, the apartment, and wants no part of helping in a store. And secondly, Libby faces the mixed of emotions of learning about the mother who abandoned her at age four in a grocery store, an abandonment that emotionally affected the rest of her life.

Libby’s ex-husband expects her give up on the yarn store and move back to Pittsburgh as he claims she never finishes anything, citing as evidence the fact that she left law school – conveniently forgetting that she left law school to get a job to support them while he finished law school. Oh yeah, she quit a book group once too. Libby accepts his judgment of her character even though, to put it mildly, Greg is a jerk. It was fun to watch Libby slowly realize that Greg is the one lacking in character and learn to deal with him as an equal.

Libby begins to rehab the apartment with very grudging help from Meghan, who, thanks to her father, also expects her mother to give up and go home. In fact, an overheard conversation during which Meghan assures her father that her mother will quit, inspires Libby to persevere in Cleveland. Several people from the neighborhood volunteer to help and they convince her that she can reopen the knitting store. One small problem is that Libby can’t knit, but her efforts to learn really endeared her to me, as I had my own problems in learning to knit.

Then Libby meets Hal O’Connell, a man who injured his hand and takes knitting classes for therapy. Hal is a gem, a romantic and yet believable man who immediately realizes Libby doesn’t have a clue how to teach him knitting, but asks her out for dinner anyway. Watching the “blind leading the blind” knitting lessons was fun and it built their friendship which naturally led to romance.

Knit Two Together is just a lovely, almost old-fashioned story with believable characters, including the obstinate Meghan, whose actions often cause Libby problems. I particularly enjoyed Gwen, an older woman who takes Libby under her wing, and a handyman named Jess, who helps rebuild the apartment and store and whose relationship to her is obviously more complex then Libby realizes. Even Barb (Libby’s deceased mother) becomes a real person as Libby comes to realize that her grandparents had not been wholly truthful about Barb’s efforts to contact Libby.

Watching Libby learn the secrets about her mother’s life and learning to deal with her own insecurities was extremely enjoyable. Libby is a lady I really cared about. By the time she meets Hal she has grown enough to stand on her own feet without letting a man set her agenda or define her. Libby’s emotional growth is what made their romance so warm and believable. This wonderful story is definitely going on my keeper shelf.

Buy it at Amazon/Barnes and Noble/Kobo

Reviewed by Linda Hurst

Grade: A-

Sensuality: Kisses

Review Date: 29/03/07

Publication Date: 2007

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Recent Comments …

  1. excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.

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