The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club
Gil McNeil
Goodreads Synopsis: Gil McNeil’s BEACH STREET KNITTING SOCIETY AND YARN CLUB is a fresh, uplifting, funny novel about knitting, the art of life, and how a young mother learns to start over after her husband’s sudden death.
A rather short synopsis from Goodreads, I know.
Okay, so I’m finally posting my review on this (practically two weeks after reading it). It’s not that I didn’t like the book and didn’t feel like writing about it, I’m just finally getting to it.
Since the synopsis up there isn’t all that helpful, let me give a bit more: Jo is a mom in her late-thirties and she has two fairly young boys. They live in England. The book opens up with her house being packed up so she can move to another part of England after her husband’s death. She takes over running her grandmother’s knitting and yarn store and updates it to a more modern shop. She meets many different people and begins to enjoy her life, even though it was never anything she considered would happen.
While there are some tough moments and themes in the book (her husband’s actions and death, the move, raising two children on her own, etc.) it was still a fairly light-hearted story. I enjoy reading books about knitting since it’s one of my hobbies. (A knitting series I enjoy actually gives knitting patterns of some of the projects mentioned in the books). The characters in this story were likable. Her story was an interesting one. I really liked how she was able to make a new life surrounded by good people. Considering what she had been through right before moving, the move was probably the best thing that had happened to her and her family. The secondary characters were good ones.
I did have to look up some of the terms since they were distinctly British. One thing I did notice (and kind of wished I had kept a tally of how many time I saw it) was the use of the word “only”. It was everywhere throughout the book. It seemed to be used to replace “but”; as in “I would go to the story, only I don’t have a car”. (that is not a quote, I just made that up). I also thought it was added in places for no apparent reason. (of course there were places where it fit as I’m used to seeing it, too).
Apparently there is a second book featuring Jo, and I’ll pick it up at some point to read it.
The title alone is irresistible. Thanks for telling me about this book. Sounds my sort of read.
I hope you enjoy it
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I really liked this title by McNeil. If you enjoyed the Beach Street Knitting Society, you’ll probably enjoy the 2 novels that follow it. They are both about Jo. I like the lightheartedness, too, as well as the British slang.
I had heard there was one other, I didn’t realize there were 2! I’ll definitely be checking them out