KNIT TWO

More-of-the-same sequel to The Friday Night Knitting Club (2007).

A predictable array of personal issues and preoccupations once again dominate the pages as Jacobs returns to the scene of her bestselling debut. Manhattan’s Walker & Daughter yarn shop provides the central setting for a group of women to knit and empathize; only its original proprietor, Georgia, is missing, having died from cancer in the first novel. Georgia’s biracial daughter Dakota is now 18, a student at New York University who is experiencing her first interest in a man. Peri, who took over the yarn business, worries that Dakota wants to supplant her (she doesn’t). Peri’s best friend KC has a high-powered job, but feels perimenopausal and anxious. Surrogate grandmother to Dakota, 78-year-old widow Anita, is finally marrying her lover. Georgia’s best friend Catherine feels the need for a family rather than more lovers. Lucie and Darwin are preoccupied with their mothering skills. Dilemmas concerning work, love, siblings, parenting and children are parceled out in various combinations to each character in an efficient but uninventive narrative that opens with a welter of links and recaps, continues minus any central focus and ends with most problems neatly solved.

Devotees of the formulaic original will likely enjoy this update, but new readers may balk at the banal observations, easy resolutions and group hugs.