Debbie Zapata's Reviews > The Friday Night Knitting Club

This is not the type of book I usually read. I tend to stay away from both bestsellers and chick lit. But my Mom has taken up knitting again recently and when I saw this book at the library sale shelves I thought it might be fun to give it a go and then let Mom have it. Besides, at fifty cents, the price was right!

The front cover had a line that said the book was like Steel Magnolias only set in Manhattan. So I was prepared for someone to die and someone to be born and at least one quick-witted, sassy woman in the bunch.

That's basically what I found, but the book was not on the same level as Steel Magnolias. I cared about all the characters there. Here I liked a few, but most of the ladies who gradually formed their knitting club and became somewhat reluctant friends did not seem real to me. The worst part was that I did not like or understand the main character. She never seemed to be as wonderful as other people thought she was. I mean that reading pages where she was in the center of the action, she seemed to be a ghost, sort of there but not alive. Only when anyone else talked about her, she sounded like Super Woman. I kept asking myself what are these people seeing that I am not?

Yes, she raised her daughter by herself. Yes, she ran a fancy yarn shop. But did she live and breathe on the page? Was she interesting as a personality? No, not in my opinion. I simply never cared what happened to her.

Steel Magnolias made me cry. This book did not. Enough said.