Knit Two

The members of The Friday Night Knitting Club have continued its weekly meetings five years after the death of the founder, Georgia Walker, owner of Walker and Daughter. Dakota, her eighteen-year-old daughter has been able to keep the shop open with the help of some of the other members, especially Peri, who has expanded the business to include felted handbags and accessories. Dakota loves the women, but her real career interest is somewhere else.
The women are all going through changes in their lives. A widow, seventy-eight-year old Anita is in a serious relationship with deli owner, Marty. Her sons strenuously oppose it. As she plans their wedding, she decides to try to find her younger sister who she hasn’t seen since throwing her show more out decades ago. Lucie, a member of the sandwich generation, has a career as a film maker which creates problems caring for her daughter and mother. Professor Darwin has finally been able to carry a pregnancy to term and is carrying twins. And Catherine, owner of an antiques and wineshop, is looking for love after her divorce.
Knitting and love of Georgia are the bonds that hold the women together, though all of them don’t knit very much. But they care for each other and help each other find themselves as well as reach their goals. Much of the story takes place in Italy where several of the women spend part of their summer on separate projects.
Some interesting observations:
Anita used her age to her advantage. “Doddering old woman? Far from it. Though playing the act was one useful thing about getting older: folks let their guard down around seemingly harmless old people, and sometimes that made it much easier for things to work out the way she wanted them to.”
How to tell if you’re going senile? “Do something fairly outrageous–rude, even–and see if people still treat you kindly. If they do, you’re officially an old bat.”
“People change. Life is just a process to figure out who we are.”
KNIT TWO ends with the instructions for an afghan and recipes for Maple Apple Muffins and Raspberry-Lime Granita.
This book is the second in the series. There are a lot of references to the first book, but it isn’t necessary to have read it to appreciate this one. Kate Jacobs’ writing style is first class. Unfortunately, I found the ending much too contrived. Anita wouldn’t be as difficult planning the details for her wedding. I also don’t think the women would be as fixated on Georgia five years after her death. show less

Utterly adorable chic flick/lit.
There is so much I could relate to this in this story -- the death of their mother; the fighting against everyone just assuming that you're going follow in your mom's footsteps, because why wouldn't you? The growing into yourself once you accept that this part of you that always was is no longer and you CAN move on and continue to live and grow.

Great little story and novel!
I loved it.

Adrianne

I really liked this follow-up to "The Friday Night Knitting Club". I was particularly drawn to Dakota - I think the exploration of all that she lost in losing her mother was really interesting. And it was nice to see her beginning to mature and figure out who she was going to be. I also enjoyed watching Catherine's growing maturity - it was an interesting contrast to Dakota. Now I wonder if there will be a third?? This book reminded me a little of Jennifer Chiaverini's quilting books. There is the same sense of interaction among women, plus the handicraft element. Though I think Ms. Jacobs writing is a bit more interesting.

While this is billed as knit-lit it really is less about the knitting (actually sometimes the knitting seems a bit superflous to the plot) and more about the women and how they're coping with the events of the last book. It's five years later and things have moved on, some of the characters haven't quite moved on and are still stuck in a bit of a rut.

There's a lot going on with the characters and it seems like Jacobs didn't want to leave any of them out of the fun so occasionally things get quite complicated and I sometimes wished that the focus would return to a single character for a while.

It's readable but I didn't find it all that special. In fact reading it felt like eating a lot of cheap chocolate, good at the time but a bad taste show more afterwards. show less

If you read The Friday Night Knitting Club you definitely need to read this follow-up book as well. This delves into what is happening in the lives of all those you came to know in the first book since the big change they all endured. This was wonderfully written for each of the many characters and really helped me feel that I got to know each person even better than I had previously. Time has passed, friendships have deepened, things have stayed much the same, and yet all has changed quite a lot at the same time. I really enjoy how well Kate Jacobs writes about friendships and how they grow and help people learn not only about each other but also about themselves. I highly recommend this book as a follow-up to the first and now I'm show more going to need to read the holiday book in this series as well. I'm not yet ready to say goodbye to the members of the Friday Night Knitting Club. show less

I thoroughly enjoyed The Friday Night Knitting Club so I was so excited to learn that it was the first in a series and couldn't wait to read Book #2. Well, I almost put the book down during the opening pages.

This book to me is written in the "old style" series where the author believes that in order for the next title in the series to be successful that they need to do a full recap of Book #1 before moving on to the next story. Not true!

Since I enjoyed the first novel so very much I decided to persevere and keep reading. When the recap was over and the new story began I did enjoy resuming 'life' with the characters in this series. However, I did downgrade it a full star due to the repetitive writing which wasn't necessary to the show more pleasure and appreciation of this story.

I will continue reading the series as I'm curious as to learn if Book 1 and Book 2 will be recapped in Book 3 before further exploration into the next adventure. If that is the case, I will stop reading this series. show less

An enjoyable light read. You need to have read the first one before this otherwise it spoils the story for you. I found this in a charity shop and didn't expect it to be very good as it seemed to be just tapping into the knitting market but it has a good story line with interesting characters. I wanted to know what had happened to the characters after the end of the first book.