Blossom Street?

I was in the mood for some fluffy chic lit when I picked this book up, and wow, it filled the bill.  Immediately.  To the brim and then some.  I did a little research and discovered that this is book three in a series of four blossom street feel good knitting group based books. Yes, I re-read that sentence, and nope, there’s no typos. 

Reading this book was like sitting down for a nice long gossipy chat over tea and cookies with one of those people who drones on and on forever about people we’ve never met and situations we don’t care about.  You know the type.  They can’t possibly tell you a simple story and get to the point.  There’s so much background you need to digest first, and so many stupid little details to dwell on, and so many facts and characters to keep straight it makes you wonder if maybe there’s going to be a trivia test later.  No worries – if you missed something the first or second time around, it will be repeated.  Many times.  Until you could not forget any of it even if you tried.  And your head starts to ache and you realize there aren’t enough cookies in the entire world to make this interesting and you develop a sudden and inexplicable loathing for tea.  

Okay.  Relatively painlessly brief synopsis:  women who share a love of knitting take a class to make prayer shawls. Lydia (cancer survivor who cannot have children so of course desperately wants to) teaches the class.   Colette, (young widow) is confused about her former boss who may be a criminal but she is in love with him and carrying his child.  Alix (alcoholic parents, familiar with life on the streets) is engaged to a minister and stressed to the max with wedding plans.  Lydia’s niece Julia is the victim of a carjacking and an ineffectual justice system and must also cope with Margaret, her vengeful neurotic mother.  And guess what?  Every single one of them has a happy ending.  After pages and pages and pages of slogging through crap.

I don’t think you could pay me enough to read the other three books in this series.  Well, maybe a million bucks and hide all the sharp knives.  Nah, even then.  Because Collette and Christian went to a restaurant and he ordered a burger and fries and she ordered soup.   That is just one of the many completely useless bits of information that seems to be burned forever into my brain.  I can’t handle the stress of wondering how knowing that makes any difference whatsoever in the development of the plot.  And if you have to start a sentence with it went without saying then for the love of GOD don’t say it.  People who knit do not seem to have any sense of humor at all.  And they live and work on streets with gaggy sounding names.  Their personal stories can make you feel downright suicidal.  I’ve learned my lesson.  No more blossom street for me.