[Audiobook]
By: Kate Jacobs
Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Dates Listened: March 10-23
Length: 12 hrs 36 mins
Source: Overdrive App
Why did I read it?
This was the last book in my monotonous work phase. I chose it because I'm 83 inside and like to knit and wanted to read fiction about people who knit.
Georgia is a single mom who owns a knitting shop in New York City. A group of women start gathering in the shop on Fridays after closing to work on their knitting projects and talk. This brings in a mess of other characters: an older woman who works in the shop part-time, a woman in her 40s who has decided to have a baby on her own, a loud middle-aged woman who has decided to go to law school, a young purse designer, and a feminist who joins to write her thesis on women participating in antiquated practices.
The plot is all over. Georgia gets hired by her former high school best friend to knit her a gown even though they haven't spoken in 15 years. The father of Georgia's twelve year old reappears after years with little or no contact. Georgia falls in love, she goes to Scotland, and other life-changing events take place (no spoilers). Plus the plots of all the other woman in the club. It was all just too much. I listened to the book so maybe it was written better but all of a sudden we would be following the story of someone else with no warning, not even a pause, and I would be so confused about what was going on. Too much happened in this book. I would think we were reaching a nice place for it to end and then I would look and still see there were 5 or 9 or however many chapters left. I saw there is a second and third book and thought "HOW?!" because way too much already happened in the first.
The writing was not great. In the book Georgia's daughter, Dakota, is 12 and eventually 13. She sounds NOTHING like a 12 or 13 year old. As someone who works with kids for a living, I would have believed her to be 8 or 9. She was both written poorly and read poorly. The words alone made her young, but the narrator made her sound even younger. Not only did the jumping character to character with no warning make the story hard to follow sometimes, but she referred to her parents in the narrations by their first names. There is a point when she is talking to her mom and I thought another woman only to find out minutes later that the woman is her mom. Why would you say "said Suzie" instead of "her mother said"? Because you want me to struggle?
The narrator was not great. Sometimes there would be no change at all in her voice/tone when reading different characters. This is especially confusing when 8 women are having a discussion while knitting - you could not tell who was talking! She also pronounced some words really weird. They went to a Seder dinner, but it took me a moment to figure out what they were doing because she pronounced it 'cedar' like the tree. She also pronounced culinary like 'que-linary'. I get it, there are accents and dialects out there...but it made it really difficult to stay on track in an already mish-mashed book.
I did like that there was some knitting terms and metaphor included. As an inner old lady, I really enjoyed that part. It wasn't a lot, so if you don't knit you're not lost the whole time. It was just a nice touch for us old souls.
Rating: 2/5 -- It's just not a good sign when near the end I hope for something bad to happen and when it does, I stand and cheer. I was in my office literally cheering for what happens and the end and when I told my coworkers what I was so happy about they thought I was crazy.
Recommendation: I don't know that I would really recommend this book to anyone. If anyone really wanted to read it I would say to physically read it to avoid the narrator. But honestly, you don't need to waste your time.
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