Knit Tight

Knit Tight (2016) Annabeth Albert (Portland Heat)

This is the fourth book in the Portland Heat series.

Brady works as a barista at People’s Cup, and one of the busiest nights he works is Wednesday, when the local knitting group meets. It’s good for tips, which he needs, because he and his eighteen year-old sister are raising their elementary school aged siblings.

The girls shared the larger bedroom with Renee, while I shared the smaller one with Jonas. It wasn’t ideal, but the social worker had nixed the idea of anyone sleeping in the living room.

Evren has come back to Portland to help his aunt run her knitting store while she is treated for cancer. He doesn’t plan to stay, and so isn’t looking for anything other than perhaps a friend.

I don’t know what it is, but although this series is perfectly find, I don’t find it anywhere near as good as her Arctic Heat series. That isn’t to say it’s bad, it’s possibly just not a tightly written as the Arctic Heat series, or perhaps these are earlier works and she’d honed her craft more by the time she wrote the Arctic Heat series.

What I particularly liked about this story was the relationship between Brady and Renee. The two are struggling–with good reasons–to take care of their younger siblings, and Renee is only 18, so she’s a teenager whose life is drastically different from that of her peers as she has to deal with childcare duties as well as as being 18 and a college student. What is done particularly well is the tension between Brady and Renee as they deal with their siblings (and each other) and the fact they can’t have the normal lives of everyone else their age.

Renee does often act like an 18-year-old, and it’s easy to get irritated with her, until you remember that she is eighteen and helping to raise her elementary school aged siblings. It’s really a terrible position she and Brady are in, and it’s understandable that both of them have trouble dealing with the stress, and that Renee is pushing at boundaries, like any normal college kid.

I liked both Brady and Evern, and how their families came first with them. The romance? It was fine.

Publisher: Lyrical Press
Rating: 7/10

• Browse the archives:
  
• Guards! Guards! » »
• « « An Unexpected Gentleman