Book Review: "Twenties Girl"

Even if you're not a fan of the 1920's, you'll still be able to appreciate this book! Admittedly, I am a fan of the 20's, but that's beside the point. ;) Regardless. I'd never heard of Sopie Kinsella by name before, althoug I knew it had seemed familiar from somewhere... Turns out, she's the one who wrote Confessions of a Shopaholic! So that should tell you that the quality of this author is high.

I love the premise of this story, because it plays into SO many "what if?" scenarios in my mind. Basically, this girl has to go to her great-aunt's funeral who died at 105 years old. Never knew her aunt in life... in fact, practically the whole family blew her off and abandoned her in a nursing home. Almost no one was at the funeral. And yet, suddenly during the services, the girl hears a voice. And sees a person who wasn't there before. Little does she know it's the ghost of her great-aunt Sadie.

The whole story becomes a whirlwind as Sadie begs the main character, Lara, to stop the funeral somehow, because she needs her necklace. Just what necklace, Lara doesn't know. Before she knows it, she gets herself tied up in trying to track down this necklace at any cost. At the same time, during the weeks she spends with the ghost, she learns about who her aunt really was and becomes friends with her, which makes it all the more devastating and heart-wrenching when Sadie finally does fully cross over at the end. There's so many plot twists in this story though.... I can't even begin to tell you how much I love it. This is quite possibly my newest favorite book! I'd rate it even higher than a 5 star rating if I could! :D

Book Review: "Knit The Season (A Friday Night Knitting Club Novel #3)"

Knit the Season is the final installment of the Friday Night Knitting Club trilogy by Kate Jacbons...and what a fine end to a series if ever I saw one. She gives our beloved characters a lovely send off.

As with many series finales, this book was writen to tie up loose ends. And that it does. Dakota is trying to find her footing in life as everything else around her seems to be changing in one way or another. As she's adjusting to all these shifts, she's still mourning the loss of her mother. As she prepares for this year's holiday season, it seems everybody has a story to share with her about her mother, all stories she'd never heard before, and all of which shed new light on what kind of person Georgia was. The little girl who thought she knew her mother better than anybody quickly finds out that there was quite about about the type of person her mother was that she didn't know about at all.

Given the twist endings of the first two books, I was on pins and needles (literally needles...I was knitting while reading the majority of this book) in tripidation of something bad happening at the end of this book. Especially with Gran slowing down, I kept fearing she might be the next Walker to go or something. I was relieved to not only find out she wasn't, but that there's no tragic twist ending on this book. Rather, the opposite.

Personally I love these books and wish this weren't the end of them, but who knows....maybe she'll write more of them someday! 5 out of 5 rating!

Book Review: "Knit Two (A Friday Night Knitting Club Novel, #2)"

The sequel to The Friday Night Knitting Club, Knit Two by Kate Jacobs brings back almost all of the old characters (minus Georgia, of course) from the first book so that we can see were everybody ended up 5 years later (and beyond, when you reach the end of this one). Unlike the first novel, which centered around Georgia, this book is a bit more equal opportunity to the rest of the characters and gives all of them more time to develop each of their storylines and personalities more in full. For this, I actually prefer this sequel to the original, but the sense of loss is palpable throughout the entire thing, and you can't help but feel like you, yourself, have lost a friend as well while reading it. While most of the other reviews I've seen of this book rave about how they like how Catherine got more of a storyline in this one, I guess I'm rooting for the underdog here. I love the fact that Anita, the lovable old woman, got so much page-time as it were to detail her engagement, upcoming nuptials, and the search for her long-lost sister. Of course, I also love everything about the Rome trip. ;) And it's kind of cool getting to see Darwin in so much more of a domestic role now. A lot can change in 5 years, and this book definitely goes into it. The story has a bit of a twist ending that yanked at my heartstrings, similar to how the first book did that at the end too, but I think it tied up some loose ends, as odd as it may be to say so over that particular ending.

I flew through this book quite a bit faster than the last one, and I'm rating it a bit higher; this one gets a 4 out of 5 star review.

Book Review: "The Friday Night Knitting Club"

I have to admit, when I first heard mention of The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs on the Goodreads website, I was instantaneously filled with glee. You see, I just picked up knitting as a new hobby last November. Everything about it still excites and thrills me. To see that it was the cornerstone of a novel? Oh my goodness! Instantly it was filed into my "to reads" list (of which, if any of you have me added over on that site, know is quite the lengthy and extensive list indeed). I'm limited only by what my local library system has on its shelves, and many times, they don't have some of the titles that I get most excited about. I was delighted to see that this one, they did have. I found it slightly daunting that almost every review for this book on the website were about 2 stars and below on average. Still, I pressed forward, figuring that the people rating it so low probably aren't even knitters and "just don't get it".

The story itself is very much a Seinfeld-esque set-up. Set in NYC, the story basically outlines the life and adventures of Georgia Walker, owner of the Walker & Daughter yarn shop, as well as her family and friends. For much of the book, nothing particularly noteworthy happens as far as plot - it's one of those stories where it's just a slice of life in each of these characters' lives. I almost found it hard to keep turning the pages, but I wanted to see where it was going. There had to be some good reason that this story got published, other than the kitschy literary devices of using aspects of knitting to teach life lessons.

And then I reached the bombshell. A mere few chapters before the end of the book.

I'll give you a spoiler: the main character dies.

And you do NOT see it coming. At all.

It's enough to tear at your heartstrings - I actually did cry when I hit this part of the story. I didn't emotionally connect with much of anything else in the entire book, but when THAT happened...oh my lord. Where did THAT come from?? It TOTALLY blindsides you, but at the same time, it happens in a very realistic way. You DON'T always see it coming when you lose a close friend. Sometimes they literally are fine one minute, and within a matter of hours, they're gone. I think the reality of this drives deep at home, and THIS is what places the book in amongst the best-sellers lists.

I feel like the dramatic moments should have been spaces out intermittently across the length of the book, rather than keeping everything SO calm and casual almost the entirety of the book and saving it all up for the ending. The writing style was also fairly dry and kind of boring for the majority of the book, which makes trying to continue reading particularly difficult. But I did it, and I'm glad I did. Now....two more books to this series to get through...

I rate this book a 3 1/2 out of 5 stars.

Book Review: "The Boy Next Door"

I've heard mention of Meg Cabot many, many times over the years, and for some inexplicable reason, had never actually picked up one of her novels. I'm not sure why, but I figured it was about high time that I fixed that. And now I'm so glad that I did.

This particular book has a very unique style to it. Much like the Internet Girls series, this book jumps the internet bandwagon, although slightly different. Instead of using instant messages, the entire story in this book is told through emails back and forth between the characters. Nothing but. I was a little skeptical as to just how that would work initially, but I'm kind of surprised how telling such emails could be! You've got a love story unfolding, marital drama, a mystery, scandal... lots of elements at play. And of course, humor. And yet, we never see these characters outside of behind their keyboards. I'm very impressed by this. However, one minor detail (that I must dock my review a point for) is that all the emails are written in exactly the same style. In 20+ years of using the internet, this came as a minor pet peeve to me that all these characters would write EXACTLY the same way, with the same literary nuances and such. In reality, everybody has a writing style unique to they and they alone. So this does take away from the realism a bit, and gets a little cringe-worthy with how many "______, I mean"s throughout the book. But other than that, I found this to be an incredibly enjoyable read and highly recommend it! 4 stars.