Lauren Elliott has waited years for her long-term boyfriend, Todd, to propose, yet he seems more focused on his career than their relationship. When Lauren learns that her younger sister is pregnant before she herself even has an engagement ring, she feels overjoyed yet disheartened. Knowing she can’t put her future on hold, Lauren prepares to make a bold choice - one that leads her to a man she never dreamed she’d meet.
Newly married to her second husband, Max, Bethanne Scranton is blissfully in love. But with Max’s job in California and Bethanne’s in Seattle, their long-distance marriage is becoming difficult to maintain. To complicate matters, Bethanne’s cunning ex will do anything to win her back.
Lydia Goetz, too, is wonderfully happy with her husband, Brad, though lately she worries about the future of A Good Yarn. As she considers how to bring in business, she discovers that someone has beaten her to the punch. Baskets of yarn are mysteriously popping up all over town, with instructions to knit a scarf for charity and bring it into Lydia’s store. Never before has her shop received so much attention but who hatched this brilliant plan?
As three women’s lives intersect in unexpected ways, Lydia, Lauren, and Bethanne realize that love heals every heart, and the best surprises still lay ahead.
Lauren, Bethanne and Lydia are friends. Lauren has been dating Todd, a TV newscaster, for a couple of years. He's promised her that he will marry her as soon as he gets the job he has been coveting and his inheritance from his grandfather. She is tired of waiting and when she breaks up with him, he doesn't take "no" for an answer, even when she gets involved with Rooster, Bethanne's husband's business partner. Her boss, Elisa's 19-year-old daughter, Katie, is pregnant and Elisa is determined to do all she can to prevent Katie from going through what she did as a young teenage mother (her marriage to Garry, Katie's father, is still going strong).
Grant, Bethanne's first husband and the father of her two children, dumped her to marry someone else. When that marriage fell apart, he assumed that Bethanne would take him back. Despite the fact that she has moved on and married Max, Grant still holds out the hope that Bethanne will come back to him and uses their daughter, Annie, as a pawn. It doesn't help that Max's business is in California and Bethanne's is in Seattle and they only see each other a couple weekends a month.
Lydia is married to Brad and owns a yarn store. They are raising Casey, who they adopted as a tween, and Cody, Brad's young son from his first marriage. Things pick up at the store when baskets of yarn are left around town, encouraging people to sit and knit for a bit. Lydia is also dealing with her mother's health declining and Casey having nightmares.
Debbie Macomber has written over 150 romance novels and contemporary women's fiction and this is the first I've read by her. I thought this was a nice story about friends who are there for each other. It was great to read a book with characters who are 35 and older. I liked the writing style, though I found some of the conversations between wives/husbands and girlfriends/boyfriends a little over the top with their talk of their love love love. The writing is clean with just a couple hints of sexual activity so it's suitable for all readers. I'm a knitter so enjoyed how it was woven into the story. This is the tenth in the series but works as a stand alone because you are given a lot of background information.
For the most part, I liked the characters. I found Lauren, Bethanne and Lydia likable along with their love interests Rooster, Max and Brad. I didn't like Annie, Bethanne's daughter. Though an adult, she acted like a child which I found extreme and unbelievable. She wanted her parents to get back together as any child would but she put all the blame on Max as the reason they were apart rather than as the consequence of Grant for leaving the marriage. And I wasn't crazy about Elise's reaction to her daughter's pregnancy. Elise and Garry had gotten married when they were young because she was pregnant with Katie and Elise wanted something different for her daughter. It sounded like Katie had a good head on her shoulders and Elise should have been more supportive rather than domineering.
This sounds like a another great read!!
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