Dirty Sexy Knitting

- Christie Ridgway -

Mixed response to this one as well.

One the one hand, I did like Gabe despite his selfish and self destructive behaviour (although did not need the 'he feels guilt for not being the perfect husband slash father' as the partial basis of his actions as a) no such things as the perfect husband/father and b) am fairly convinced that losing your wife and child to a drunk driver is more than enough reason to feel self destructive and suicidal, without the added rationalization of the guilt factor) and though his transition to more responsible behaviour felt fairly erratic and unexplained, I enjoyed the 'love of a good woman' trope pulling him out of it.

On the other hand: Cassandra. I said after the last book in the series that I wasn't really down with her taking all this action regarding the sperm donor father etc without her sister's consent and that is magnified even more in this book. As a character, and despite all the times we are told she is so sympathetic, nurturing etc to everyone else, she came across as way too self pitying to me. What's more, all the self pity - as in poor me, I never had a father and they did - was used as her rationalization for acting expliciting against her sister's wishes and contacting their father. I spend a lot of time just wishing she would stop feeling so sorry for herself over everything.

I enjoyed the Marlys and Dean storyline in this book way more and loved seeing her realize how atrocious her actions had been, and learn to grow up, grieve for her father and open herself up to emotion. Plus Dean is just sexy.

So overall this series has been enjoyable generally, but frustrating if I think too much about the specifics of many of the situations.