WHEN FRIENDS BECOME FAMILY — A Review of “The Friday Night Knitting Club”

“The Friday Night Knitting Club,” by Kate Jacobs, is a book that invites you in, like a friend. You curl up right next to the others who are shopping and attending this club event at a yarn store.

Georgia Walker is a single mom to a biracial child named Dakota. She was abandoned before the baby was even born, twelve years before. When she had to support herself and her daughter, she worked odd jobs, but did knitting for people. Through some strokes of luck and financing, she managed to open her shop, which she calls Walker and Daughter, on New York’s Upper West Side. Her shop—and her apartment—are in a building whose bottom floor is occupied by Marty Popper and his delicatessen. He, too, is like family.

Anita Lowenstein happens to have been her benefactor who lent her money to start the business, and has become like her right hand/mother figure, etc. Anita found her crying on a bench all those years ago after her boyfriend James Foster left her.

Nowadays, the shop is a bustling business, but what sets it apart from other shops is the cozy atmosphere, which morphs into this gathering place for knitters (incidentally, on Friday nights). More than a club, the knitting group is a place where the women share their lives.

Then when Georgia’s ex and a friend from the past—someone who betrayed her!—show up out of the blue, she begins to think that her world as she knows it is coming undone.

What will Georgia do, and what surprises are in store for her? How will a trip to Scotland to visit her granny offer a unique perspective on her life and her choices?

When you reach the final pages of this cozy book, you won’t want it to end. Which is why I gave it five stars.