KNOT AGAIN

A firefighter with a tragic past rekindles a 15-year-old romance when his newly divorced crush moves back to town.

After having been crowned Mr. November for this year’s upcoming FDNY calendar, firefighter Lucas Strong is plenty exhausted keeping his Harlem neighborhood safe and dodging passes from CPR patients. Since his foster mother, Mama Joy, died almost a year ago, he works extra hours helping his three brothers at their yarn shop, Strong Knits, on top of his shifts at the firehouse. He can barely sleep, and when he does, he's plagued by nightmares about the deaths of Mama Joy and his birth mother. The only place Lucas truly finds comfort is Scrubs, the laundromat owned by Sydney Harris-Hughes’ grandfather. Sydney, the no-nonsense "Ice Princess of Harlem" and his high school crush, left home to study at George Washington University and started a family as a D.C. society wife to appease her mother. Lucas never felt that he could have offered a grand enough life for her, but when Sydney returns to Harlem, divorce papers in hand, to help Pops at Scrubs, he realizes he may finally have a shot at telling her his true feelings. Yet with Syd’s disappointment about what she sees as her failure to be “Mrs. Perfect” and Lucas’ fear of not being able to save the women he loves, they both run the risk of leaving too many words unsaid. The second book in Jackson's Real Men Knit series follows the second Strong brother as he navigates family, romance, and unresolved trauma. Jackson excels at the family portion, breathing personality into each of the Strong brothers and Syd’s 9-year-old daughter, Remi. Lucas and Syd’s union is underwhelming, though, and they spend so much time talking in circles that you’ll get whiplash from wondering how they finally ended up at a resolution.

A promising second-chance romance that takes one too many tumbles.