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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780399156380
ISBN: 0399156380
Label: Putnam Adult
Manufacturer: Putnam Adult
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 272
Publication Date: November 03, 2009
Publisher: Putnam Adult
Studio: Putnam Adult
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Knit the Season is a loving, moving, laugh-out-loud celebration of special times with friends and family. The story begins a year after the end of Knit Two, with Dakota Walker's trip to spend the Christmas holidays with her Gran in Scotland-accompanied by her father, her grandparents, and her mother's best friend, Catherine. Together, they share a trove of happy memories about Christmases past with Dakota's mom, Georgia Walker-from Georgia's childhood to her blissful time as a doting new mom. From Thanksgiving through Hanukkah and Christmas to New Year's, Knit the Season is a novel about the richness of family bonds and the joys of friendship.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
This book is a great little story for the holiday season. I enjoy Kate Jacob's books enormously. Everyone knows that any slim volume with a shiny red cover appearing in the stores around Halloween is going to be a cute, fluttery holiday tale. So with the expectations set, I looked forward to reading it to find out what the Friday Night Knitting Club had been up to lately.
This book captures the warmth and spirit of the holiday season and what it means to Dakota to share time with family and friends. This third book is also a great segue to future installments which I look forward to. It also gives more history and background for each of the characters so that Jacobs can develop her base of fans for the next book in the series. I love the flashbacks from each of the characters. They permit the reader to rediscover each player. Every character is different, but they each share the love of friendship. This story is a warm and wonderful light read for this time of the year. Eggnog, anyone?
Rating:  -
I really enjoyed TFKNC and I liked Knit Two, but admittedly a little less than the original. The third book seems to be a little more "phoned in." I agree with the reviewer who said that the characters are more two-dimensional here, and have lost some of their spark, particularly Anita. I found the entire plot with her son Nathan - just a plot device to provide conflict -- entirely unbelievable. I thought Jacobs did a better job trying to humanize Nathan (a very little bit) in Knit Two than in this book, where his actions are entirely unbelievable, and Anita's lack of backbone makes no sense. Part of the appeal of TFKNC is that readers can see themselves in some, or even all, of the characters. Of course I know people who had trouble with their parents remarrying, but I know no one who acts like Nathan or has a son like him. It was jarring.
Not trying to give spoilers here, but it's clear from the book description that a component of this novel are "memories" of Georgia. I found them contrived and not very compelling -- personally, I prefer my own memories of the Georgia I "met" in TFKNC over these little over-simplified, slightly schmaltzy vignettes. I also dislike some of the hackneyed narrative techniques she uses in this book and Knit Two, such as characters slipping into reveries (aka our insight into their memories, feelings, etc.) and then being interrupted with the way overused novel line, "Earth to So-and-so! Where were you?" If a character is going to give us info via a daydream, just do it already! You don't need to create a fake conversation around it.
On the positive side, although I didn't exactly believe it, I like the focus Jacobs places on Catherine and the growth of her character through the second and third books.
Overall, it was a light read and a fun, warm holiday catch-up with old friends, but a bit like visiting people you haven't seen in a while, and then you're not exactly sure why you were drawn to them to begin with.
Rating: -
I actually pre-ordered this book ... that's how much I enjoyed Kate Jacobs' first two installments in the "Friday Night Knitting Club" series, as well as her book "Comfort Food". However, unlike the other readers who have thus far reviewed "Knit the Season" here, I was somewhat disappointed in the end product this time.
Knit the Season is not a *bad* book, but it's also not a terrific one. Some of the plot elements were contrived and overly-predictable, and the author's use of flashback scenes/dialogue (snippets from various points in Georgia's life) was - to me - an irritating, extraneous interruption. For all of the characters' zeal about telling Dakota unvarnished stories about her mother, these flashbacks still paint a picture of Georgia as largely saint-like; the first book did a much better job at fleshing out her character and providing insights into the woman she was. Presumably, since Dakota was not a young child when her mother died, her memories of her mother would have provided her with a much more realistic snapshot of the woman than the vignettes that the flashback segments produce.
If I hadn't read the first two books, I would have pegged the characters here as two-dimensional. Dakota's "passion" for baking and her desire to ultimately pursue a career as a pastry chef - which was quirky, charming, and just one facet of her personality in the previous books - reaches nearly obsessive proportions throughout most of the book. Dakota also tends to stay "in her own head" a great deal. It would have been interesting (and more illuminating) to see her interact with her classmates or her teachers, but her interactions in the book are virtually limited to those that involve her family and the "knitters" although she is purportedly a full-time student. Anita is a spineless simp who allows her son to dictate her life. The spirit and "spark" that characterized her in the previous books is missing here. Catherine waffles back and forth about committing to her long-distance paramour, due to her inability to reconcile retaining her independence with being in a relationship. Professor-and-mom-to-twins Darwin and producer-and-single-mom Lucie - two of the more-interesting characters in the previous books - are, here, reduced to looking on from the periphery as their families share a duplex and each wonders how to let the other know that sometimes there's such a thing as too much togetherness.
You get the idea.
Kudos do go to Jacobs for including a brief but pivotal scene set at a Chanukah party given by Anita and her beau; it was nice to see the holiday included as more than an afterthought. However, I think I'd have preferred a better-conceived plot that wasn't shaped around the holiday season.
In sum, an unremarkable albeit quick read, with predictable outcomes. I wouldn't mind revisiting the Club, but I hope that next time there is a more compelling story to tell. Based upon her other books, Kate Jacobs seems to be a talented author, and this is not a bad book - it's just not a terrific one. I recommend reading the first two books in the series before heading into this one. And I recommend Jacobs' "Comfort Food" as a superior alternative that better showcases her talent.
Rating: -
Knitters often have conflicted feelings when it comes to the winter holidays. Sure, it's fun to knit handmade gifts for family and friends, but it's also all too easy to bite off more than you can chew, making up an overly ambitious gift list that results in a lot of late-night secretive knitting to get those items finished in time for gift giving. At times, Kate Jacobs's third novel, KNIT THE SEASON, can feel a bit frantic, too, as she ambitiously tries to keep up with the dozen or so characters whose lives she chronicles. However, in the spirit of the holidays, readers will probably count themselves lucky to have a book that's bursting at the seams with feel-good stories --- kind of like having a house full of holiday merrymakers.
KNIT THE SEASON starts about a year after the events of KNIT TWO, the sequel to THE FRIDAY NIGHT KNITTING CLUB. At the center of the novel is Dakota Walker. Dakota's mother, Georgia, was the heroine of Jacobs's debut and the founding member of the knitting club in question. In many ways --- even though she died at the close of the first novel --- Georgia is still at the center of the club as its members and their friends and family recall Georgia's influence in numerous vignettes scattered throughout the book. Dakota, who was a precocious preteen baker at the series' open, is now an increasingly ambitious young woman.
Dakota's dreams of becoming a professional pastry chef (and of renovating the Walker & Daughter knitting shop into a knitting café featuring her homemade goodies) are in sight thanks to her enrollment at culinary school and an upcoming internship in a hotel kitchen. She is also committed to working on the book of knitting patterns her mom left behind in the hopes of publishing it someday. But Dakota's ambitions are complicated by business partner Peri's decision to make a big career move of her own --- not to mention by her dad's new romance and her own conflict between family devotion and career aspirations.
As Dakota finds her way, she is surrounded by women --- KC, Anita, Darwin, Lucie, Peri and Catherine --- who are unfailingly supportive but also deeply involved in their own lives' journeys. It's clear that Georgia's spirit is what continues to keep these diverse women together (the touching vignettes about Georgia take up an increasingly large portion of the narrative), but they also have their own lives to lead, lives that were often sent in different directions thanks to Georgia's influence.
It's unclear at the end of the novel if Jacobs will continue to follow the wildly changing fortunes of the original Friday Night Knitting Club, but readers will certainly hope to check in on their lives from time to time, even though they may soon be spread across two continents and several time zones. No matter what, Jacobs's fans will be sure to find time for KNIT THE SEASON this holiday season, regardless of how many gifts-in-waiting they have on their needles.
--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl
Rating: -
This was a great read for the holiday season. I know that a lot of people are like me, and enjoy the break from our normal reads at this time of the year. This book captures the warmth and spirit of the holiday season to share with family and friends. This is the third book in the series and I had to go read the first two books before reading this. It's not necessary, but it gives you more history and background for each of the characters. I love the flashbacks from each of the characters and it helps with the reasons of their choices in life. Every character is different, but they each share a meaning and love of friendship. A truly warm and wonderful read for this time of the year.
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