Don’t worry, despite the title it’s not one of these:

Now, you can’t unsee it either.

The Knitting in the City contemporary romance series is extremely highly-rated on Amazon and I both do and do not understand why. I don’t know what juju is in these books, but I keep re-reading the ones I have, particularly Neanderthal Seeks Human and Neanderthal Marries Human which both focus on the same couple. Re-readability is a kind of litmus test for me with this genre. I interact with the novels differently than I do other books. If one grabs me, I will reread my favourite sections and revisit the book again and again. If I really like it, such as A Kiss for Midwinter, I will read it again from cover to cover. (Note: I did this yesterday.) and not just the good bits. That does not mean what you think it means.

Knitting in the City Series

1. Neanderthal Seeks Human – Strangely compelling
2. Friends Without Benefits – Meh
3. Neanderthal Marries Human – More strangely compelling
4. Love Hacked – Pretty darn good
5. Beauty and the Mustache – Really liked it
6. Ninja at First Sight – quite good
7. Happily Ever Ninja – frustrating
8. Dating-ish: A Humanoid Romance
9. A Marriage of Inconvenience

The heroine of Neanderthal Seeks Human and Neanderthal Marries Human, Janie, is both wonderfully quirky and highly capable. A buxom goddess, her sense of self is in contradiction to how other people perceive her. A first person narrator, she misinterprets or is oblivious to a lot of what goes on around her, experiencing the romantic self-doubt even the most together people feel. Janie is very likeable and that goes a long way. She might misunderstand, but she is smart and kind. I would have like to hear the hero’s perspective as well and the second book, Neanderthal Marries Human, incorporates it with good results.

Quinn Sullivan (Holy romance novel name, Batman!), owns a large security firm. He’s self-made and has a dubious past. Taciturn and stoic, he has many qualities that would be really annoying in real life, but are perfectly groovy in a hero. I enjoy these large, quiet protector types, even though such a creature would drive me crazy almost instantly were he real. Quinn communicates almost exclusively with his eyes, slight changes in the way he holds his mouth, and with his hands. He can’t keep them off of Janie. I cannot resist a besotted hero.

While the Neanderthal love story was sweet, the secondary plot was more dramatic in nature and a little cray-cray: Major events being dropped in and then glossed over, tons of family baggage, and things taking a turn for Too Much.

Like the Neanderthal books, Love Hacked suffered from cloak-and-dagger-and-not-really-unwilling-suspension-of-disbelief sub-plotting and benefited from a sweet relationship. The hero, Alex, was different from almost any I’ve read. Filling a usual heroine’s role, the Victim of Circumstance, he has a very difficult past, a not much less complicated present, and a heroine, Sandra (Holy not a romance novel name, Batman!), who not so much rescues him, but accepts him as he is. He is also the youngest hero I’ve ever read. He has crammed a lot into his young life and this makes the match believable.

Was that coherent? Do I care? Did I stutter? I have been working long days for the past 10 weeks (poor me) and these three Knitting in the City books have become the vodka tonics to my long day. To be perfectly honest, with some romances, – not these – this has meant skipping from the set up to when the couple first gets together. Plain escapism isn’t enough, I require full immersion and recurring familiar escapism, so I re-read. Apparently, my work brain needs to be subsumed immediately and can’t be bothered with all that lovingly crafted exposition. Revisiting books that are already familiar or have recently become so [cough]theseones[cough] fills the bill.

Question: Sandra is 28 and a practicing psychiatrist. Doesn’t that take about 12 years? Would she be done with her undergrad/medical school/residency already?

Penny Reid’s Catalogue gives an overview of her published works , some of which I recommend and some of which I dislike intensely.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

Tagged: book reviews, contemporary romance, Knitting in the City, Penny Reid, romance reviews