We’re turning to knitting fiction for today’s Fiber Arts Fiction Friday selection. In Knit Two, we return to New York City and the Walker and Daughter knitting store in this sequel from author Kate Jacobs. This is the second book in her Friday Night Knitting Club series.
Synopsis (Story Details Below, But No Major Spoilers)
The women of the Friday Night Knitting Club have continued to meet regularly at Walker and Daughter even after the death of founder Georgia Walker. In this sequel, we again follow each of the women through their own individual challenges and watch them support each other throughout it all.
Former part-time employee Peri has taken over the day-to-day running of the store, as well as the small apartment above the shop. She’s also continued work on her Peri Pocketbook collection and has started seeing some success in getting her knitted handbags into more and more shops. Although Dakota (the daughter of Walker and Daughter) continues to take shifts in the shop, she’s enrolled at NYU and still pursuing her true passion of baking. Dakota is struggling to figure out who she really is and what she wants to do with her life.
Catherine, Georgia’s friend from childhood, has left her husband and opened a thriving antique shop (with an attached winery!), but is still trying to figure out who she truly is without her socialite life. When Lucie, now a successful filmmaker, has a once-in-lifetime opportunity to travel to Italy to shoot a music video for a young pop star, Catherine decides to tag along on the journey. Dakota comes along to babysit Lucie’s young daughter, despite her father’s reticence to see her work in a domestic service role as a young mixed-race woman.
Their trip to Italy is everything you’d expect: tiring, beautiful, and more than a little bit chaotic. Anita, Georgia’s longtime friend and mentor, arrives in Italy looking for her long-lost sister accompanied by her new partner Marty (who owns the deli in the same building as Walker and Daughter). James (Dakota’s father) has also invited himself along, finding work to do at one of his firm’s hotel properties. Although the group going to Italy grew to be larger than expected, it turns out to be lucky they are all there to support each other.
Meanwhile, back in New York KC is struggling to quit smoking, and Darwin is struggling after giving birth to twins. They end up calling their friends in Italy for an impromptu session of the Friday Night Knitting Club! While Peri, KC, and Darwin feel slightly jealous about the Italy trip, they all have plenty to keep them busy at home.
Tragedy strikes right before everyone returns from Italy, when an accident in the knitting shop causes tens of thousands of dollars in damage. Although the mess in the store is heartbreaking, it also forces each of the members of the Friday Night Knitting club to reevaluate their own lives especially in relation to Walker and Daughter and the legacy of Georgia Walker herself. As in the previous book in this knitting novel series, the women are reminded that they can always accomplish more together than they can alone.
My Review
This knitting novel was a fun sequel to The Friday Night Knitting Club. Although there are still moments of darkness, this was a much more cheerful read than the original book. It was nice to return to this group of women and learn about how much they’ve grown, as well as notice how far they still have to go. It is a true sequel, and if you haven’t read the first book you should be sure to do that first before diving into Knit Two.
Knitting is still a theme in this book, although less so than the first one. One of the ways knitting is highlighted is through the “Georgia Afghans” that the group have begun knitting each year for charity. The group based their afghans off the one they originally knit for Georgia during her illness, and are a nice way to remember Georgia’s life and love for the women in the group.
Final Thoughts
I was really happy that Knit Two ended much more joyfully than The Friday Night Knitting Club. Even though there was tragedy at the end, it was much less devastating than Georgia Walker’s death in book one. This sequel kept knitting as a central theme, even when half of the members of the club traveled to Italy. It was a great reminder that if we don’t like where we are in life, we each have the power to take steps to try and change. There’s never a guarantee in life, but the best we can do is to try.
Want to grab your own copy of Knit Two? Find it on Amazon here.
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