The Shop on Blossom Street

From Amazon:

A Seattle knitting store brings together four very different women in
this earnest tale about friendship and love. Lydia Hoffman, a two-time
cancer survivor, opens the shop A Good Yarn as a symbol of the new life
she plans to lead. She starts a weekly knitting class, hoping to
improve business and make friends in the area. The initial class
project is a baby blanket, and Macomber (Changing Habits),
a knitter herself who offers tips about the craft and pithy
observations from knitting professionals throughout the novel, includes
the knitting pattern at the start of the book. Well-heeled Jacqueline
Donovan, who chooses to ignore her empty marriage, disguises her
disdain for her pregnant daughter-in-law by knitting a baby blanket.
Carol Girard joins the group as an affirmation of her hopes to finally
have a successful in vitro pregnancy. Alix Townsend, a high school
dropout with an absentee father and a mother incarcerated for forging
checks, uses the class to satisfy a court-ordered community service
sentence for a drug-possession conviction for which her roommate is
really responsible. Unfortunately, Macomber doesn't get much below the
surface of her characters, and, although they all have interesting back
stories, the arc of each individual happy ending is too predictable.
The only surprise involves Alix's hapless, overweight roommate, Laurel,
and even this smacks of plot-driven manipulation. Macomber is an adept
storyteller overall, however, and many will be entertained by this
well-paced story about four women finding happiness and fulfillment
through their growing friendships.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

My opinion:

I really loved this book. I enjoyed watching the characters develop and change their perspective on life.  Though the knitting angle was good in the story, it didn't make me want to knit.  LOL

"Perhaps what the average member of a group is capable of doesn't limit what a given individual can accomplish." -- Boston Globe, letter to the editor
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