The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I don’t normally read ‘chick lit’ and this book underscored why.

I didn’t have a real problem with the writing style, which included a lot of fragmented sentences, but I did have a problem with the slow start. Jacobs spent quite a bit of time on the outskirts of the story before really getting into the characters and the conflicts. I only started to like the main character of Georgia after I’d gotten frustrated and sampled some later chapters to see if I wanted to continue.

The main threads were pretty standard stuff: feisty woman overcomes odds to become a success, then learns the true meaning of success when she embraces a diverse group of other women and allows herself to lean on them a little. There’s the whole mama-lion thing and the rekindling of a True Love That Was Meant To Be, and even the wise old grandmother with the commonsense boot to the metaphorical butt. Once nearly everyone is happy and fulfilled, of course, is when tragedy strikes.

Despite its obviousness, and a rather rushed ending, I finished it and didn’t feel like throwing it at the wall when I was done. It was an okay way to spend a couple of hours, but these are not women I’d care to hang around with on a regular basis.

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Purity of Blood by Arturo Pérez-Reverte
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

As a fan of historical fiction, I really appreciated the opportunity to learn something about the period in which this story takes place. The manners and mores of Spain during the Inquisition came alive for me in this book, which was a blessing, because the plot itself left me underwhelmed.

Captain Alatriste is hired to rescue a young woman from a seraglio masquerading as a convent, but he never gets closer that trying to break in, because his enemies in the Inquisition and the government use the opportunity to try to finish him off.

The inclusion of some of Spain’s most famous poets and politicians of the period enchants, but they are not enough to make up for the main narrator’s irritating habit of moving back and forth through memories of his life as a boy with Captain Alatriste and then as an adult soldier. He seems to come unstuck in time as much as Billy Pilgrim and with less of a reason. He also seems to be a bit of a mind reader, since he correctly describes the feelings of people in situations that take place while he is out of the action.

Even so, the characters are interesting, just not well-served in this book.

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