Knitting Under the Influence by Claire LaZebnik

Knitting Under the Influence Reviews

• 
  Kel

  It's a cute book. The knitting content isn't huge, but so what, it's a novel and it's not about knitting, it's about three women who are friends and they all knit. :) I liked it. The circle of friends in the book is as diverse as a real knitting circle which I thought was great. I also enjoyed the content about Autism, Behavior Modification, and Scientific Experiments. Good stuff, I tell ya. It's chick lit with a conscience. :)
  
  I've seen a lot of people complain that there's not enough knitting content in this book but what I think is this... if you want a book with a bunch of knitting content in it, read a pattern book. It's not like when I go to knit with friends that alllll we talk about is knitting, so why should a book about knitting friends be allll about knitting? :) I rest my case.
• 
  Melissa

  
  
  Warning - maybe somewhat spoilerish. I don't have the spoiler check box on my app.
  
  And I think Barbara purposely lent me this book to get a reaction out of me. It worked.
  
  
  
  Predictable and easy to read. It's 400 pages, but I finished on three train commutes to work. I pretty much expect chick-lit to be predictable, so I didn't have an issue with that - I like fluffy reading.
  My issue was with the characters and I really wanted to jam a knitting needle into their eyes (well, maybe just Kathleen's nose as she didn't annoy me as much). Here's my rationale for knitting violence:
  Lucy used to be fat but lost 40 pounds. My first thought was "me too! I'm so going to relate to her!" but I was off, way off. She works in a lab killing rats for research. Even though her bf also kills rats and gets his car vandalized and stuff, he's the bad guy, she's not because she wanted to be a vet as a kid. WTF?! So if Charlie Manson grew up with a picture of Mother Theresa on his wall he wouldn't be as evil?! And back to the weight issue: the woman does not eat. She skips dinner out to eat 9 cashews, comes late to charity walks because they have donuts, drinks whiskey because it's less calories.... Give the freakin' character a sandwich already! They should have had an anorexia intervention for this chick because this was just so, so wrong. I hated her.
  Sari works as a therapist for autistic kids. You might be thinking how can I want to hurt such a noble character? Just wait. She admits early on that she prefers to work with the cute autistic kids. Again, WTF?! I would even give slack if she preferred the higher functioning or non-aggressive as that might make sense. Or even the really challenging kids bc she feels she could make a difference. Nope, the cute ones. Superficial much? And her main way of treating them is to give candy as rewards. I don't know much about autism, but I'm thinking that giving kids a thousand M&M's a day doesn't sound like a great idea. Then at the end of the book, an autistic person is observed for about 10 minutes, provided with a solution and everyone's happy. Again, not an expert, but I know IEP's take a lot longer than a visit to Baskin Robbins.
  Kathleen has movie star twin sisters (think the Olsen twins) that she's been sponging off of her whole life. They get in a fight and she moves out so her strategy is to marry rich because she's beautiful. She honestly didn't annoy me that much since she was upfront with her "I'm sexy and I know it" way of life. The author must have an eating disorder because as little as Lucy ate, Kathleen made up for it. I think we were supposed to hate Kathleen because she eats six eggs for breakfast and is still thin.
  
  Oddly, I don't regret reading this book, perhaps I just wanted to enact knitting violence, but I doubt I'll read more from this author.
• 
  Erin

  I guess chick lit is a guilty pleasure. The book caught my eye because it's about a knitting circle, but it's below average: predictable and formulaic. The characters are either unsympathetic or immature for their ages, and you can tell who will end up with whom almost the instant the characters are introduced. I finished the book because I became invested somewhere around page 200 (the book is needlessly long, too, by the way, coming in at 400 pages) but, yeah. Skip this one.
• 
  Sarah

  I'm not sure why I picked this up, probably because I liked the idea of women who bond over knitting. But this isn't funky DIY knitting, it is $300 cashmere yarn to prove you love your asshole boyfriend knitting. It pretty much just confirms my hatred of chick lit, particularly the part where it glorifies gross consumerism, being thin to the point of disordered eating, and empowering platitudes as a substitute for real human connection and friendship. I have no idea if this is representative of the genre, but while reading it I just kept hoping that all the characters would get personality transplants stat.
• 
  Kate

  This book is your typical chick lit. I sat down and read it last night, cover to cover, without breaking a sweat. It took me four hours, but would have taken me less than that if my husband hadn't kept interrupting, playing songs and trying to start an impromptu singalong in our home office!
  
  The story centers around three women, Lucy, Sari, and Kathleen. They get together to knit and get drunk and the book follows them through I would guess about a year of their lives. The time frame is not so clear to me. Sari is an autism specialist who is working with a kid whose father Jason used to be real mean to Charlie, Sari's autistic brother, in high school. Kathleen is flying around with Kevin, a super wealthy, shoud-be-the-man-of-her-dreams type. But when they get engaged, why is Kathleen thinking of her much-older-but-just-as-rich neighbor? And Lucy is a research scientist whose boyfriend and fellow scientist James thinks everyone in the world is an idiot except for himself. When lab partner David shows up on Lucy's doorstep with a little surprise, what will Lucy do?
  
  I think you can see where this is headed.
  
  It was not the world's best chick lit, but it also was not the world's worst. The worst problem I had was not being able to keep the women straight for the first half of the book--they all seemed interchangeable. And I also didn't like the first chapter--Kathleen in particular came off as someone I was not going to like very well.
  
  This is a book club book, so I'll leave it there for now until I can discuss it with my girls. Maybe their perspectives will teach me something I missed!
• 
  Steph Wanamaker

  I really liked the friendship between the girls and how each one had a very different story to tell. i liked how the issue of autistic kids was handled with sensitivity as well . both humourous and serious it was a fast and though provoking read
• 
  Kate McMurry

  Terrific book by one of my favorite authors
  
  In this frequently humorous novel set in the glitzy world of LA, three best friends who are in their late 20's regularly connect to knit together and gossip about their lives. Two of the friends, Lucy and Sari, have known each other since childhood, and Kathleen is a latecomer to the team. She is a fraternal triplet with two identical twin sisters who have been actors since babyhood. As such, they are, I assume, purposely reminiscent of the Olsen twins.
  
  Kathleen is gorgeous and is willing to have sex with an interesting, attractive man, but she doesn't commit, because she has a low threshold of boredom. At the beginning of the book, she walks out of her long-term, greatly under-appreciated job as live-in caretaker of her sisters and ends up landing immediately on her feet as a housesitter for a $2.5-million, downtown apartment owned by 47-year-old, divorced, real-estate mogul, Sam.
  
  Sari has an autistic older brother, and her career is counseling and teaching autistic kids. Her romantic interest is the father of an autistic four-year-old. She believes (but is not absolutely sure her memory is accurate) that years ago, in high school, he either actively participated in, or stood by and did not stop, harassment of her autistic brother.
  
  Lucy is a brilliant scientific researcher engaged in animal-testing on rats who has been dating an equally brilliant researcher for quite a while. He is handsome and she's very sexually attracted to him, but he is a judgmental, narcissistic jerk. Unfortunately, Lucy, who used to be quite overweight in high school and is now svelt and attractive, suffers from low self-esteem and figures that she would be nuts to walk away from such a socially high-status boyfriend. Meanwhile she regularly verbally skirmishes with, and also strongly respects, her lab partner David, who is half Chinese, half Jewish, and every bit as brilliant as her jerky boyfriend, but not remotely as good looking or high status.
  
  The central core of the book, as is the case with all women's fiction (versus romance fiction), is the relationship between the three women. The author presents an idealized view that they will be there for each other when, eventually, their future husbands inevitably desert them (because men are cads), and their ungrateful, future, teen and adult offspring sneer at them or ignore them. In a great many chick-lit novels, especially those by this author, there is a theme that is also a staple of young-adult fiction, "coming of age," that is, over the course of the novel, the protagonist gains much greater emotional maturity and hard-won wisdom than she displays at the beginning of the novel. This particular chick-lit novel is rather a hybrid of chick-lit and romance fiction in that all three female protagonists gradually move beyond the premise that only female friends can be trusted, into more of a romance-novel world view, that it is possible to form healthy, mutually supportive, heterosexual, mated relationships. They accomplish this by growing beyond a long-standing habit of passively complaining to each other about their dysfunctional romantic relationships to, instead, displaying strong, personal, emotional boundaries and directly confronting the men in their lives, thereby allowing those men to either step up to the plate and prove that they can be mature, too, or walk out and remove their destructive, egocentric selves from the heroines' lives.
  
  I admit freely that I am a fan of Claire LaZebnik. I have read every one of her books, most of them twice, and this one three times. Let me further say that is quite a compliment because, as you can see by many of my remarks above, that I am not at all a fan of chick lit and never have been. I much prefer the greater optimism (as I see it, anyway) of the romance genre. Chick lit has been around for several decades, ever since
  Bridget Jones's Diary, and involves a very narrow range of female experience, essentially clueless and immature twenty-something women who form close friendships with other women but have a lot of dating disasters with equally clueless and immature men. The ultimate conclusion of such books tends to be that it is amazing that heterosexual twenty-somethings ever manage to form healthy romantic alliances at all, and maybe it isn't even worth trying--why not just stick to your female friends, who will always be there for you emotionally, and call it a day? In short, even when they are humorous, the underlying world view of chick-lit novels tends to be rather depressing, especially when everyone involved is copiously drowning their social frustrations, or boosting their courage to resume the romantic fray, with buckets of booze, or either loading up on junk food (without, improbably, getting fat) or engaging in anorexic behavior to stay thin (though I will admit a certain amount of this same behavior occurs in many modern romance novels, especially the Harlequin Blaze type novels).
  
  For the very reason that I'm personally not fond of chick lit, I've asked myself frequently why I like this book so much, and my ultimate conclusion is I can't get enough of Kathleen and Sam, both individually and as a couple. Kathleen is rather ditzy and she drinks too much, as I've mentioned that most chick-lit heroines tend to do, but I love her natural athleticism, her complete detachment from the utter superficiality of the Hollywood world she has been on the fringe of for years, and her careless disinterest in the power she could easily wield over men if she chose to do so due to her obvious physical beauty. Instead, the focus of her life is her friendships and her great zest for engaging in witty banter with all comers.
  
  Speaking of that banter, anyone who is a fan of the famous, Regency-romance author, Georgette Heyer, who is a master of witty banter, will love Kathleen and Sam, and Kathleen's banter in general with her two women friends as well. There is also, to a lesser degree, some banter between Lucy and her romantic interest, David. In my humble opinion, the ability to engage in verbal wordplay (or as an author, the ability to write it in dialogue) is a sign of creativity and high intelligence, and I savor it wherever I can find it. (There is quite a bit of it, by the way, in the Harry Dresden series by the brilliant Jim Butcher, one of the major features I enjoy about Harry as a character, above and beyond what he is most famous for, his bravery and power as a fighting wizard.)
  
  I also love slow-burn romance plots, especially romances that begin with a wary slide into friendship, and the relationship between Kathleen and Sam has all those features. For that reason, it is one of my favorite romantic relationships among all of Ms. LaZebnik's books.
  
  I rate this book as follows:
  
  Heroine Kathleen: 5 stars
  Heroine Sari: 3 stars
  Heroine Lucy: 3 stars
  Hero Sam: 5 stars
  Hero Jason: 4 stars
  Hero David: 4 stars
  Friendship Plot: 5 stars
  Romance Plot Kathleen: 5 stars
  Romance Plot Sari: 3 stars
  Romance Plot Lucy: 4 stars
  Writing: 5 stars
  Overall: 4 stars
• 
  Avigail

  This book is 3.5 -stars. I was in the mood for a chick-lit novel, I had it at my bookshelves for a long time. It is also a book that I picked it up a couple of times I was reading a couple of chapters and putting it down. This time it gripped, and finally, I can put it in my reading pile.
  I adored the sincere friendship of Kathreen, Saly, and Lucy. They will do everything for each other. Yes, the knitting is a thing the girls do once a week but is something that connects them all the time. Their friendship is like something knitted the yarn, and the rows of knits and pearls keep them together.
  Autism is a big part of this book, especially for Sari, one of the three main characters. She has an autistic brother that there were acts of bullying during their school years. She works at a clinic that helps autistic children with communication and social skills. Her high school crush comes to the clinic with his autistic child for therapy. Claire LaZebnik writes the autism part well because she has an autistic child and has written a book with the therapists that helped her with her son.
  It is an ok chick-lit because at the end of the story each one of the girls finds herself and her match.
  If you are picking the book because of the knitting aspect, I would suggest you pick other books, but if you are looking for a book with actual people and great friends this book is for you to pick up.
• 
  Abbey

  I did not expect to fly through this in one day! While quite dated (can we please not with the fat shaming and use of the r word, though it does get called out), the friendship and growth amongst the three main characters was lovely to read. Some of the autism representation was questionable and felt oversimplified, but the author has a son on the autism spectrum and likely had to simplify some aspects for the novel. Also, it’s from 2006 - not an excuse, but potentially context.
  
  Overall sweet, quick, and the added bonus of a dash of knitting.
• 
  Hélène Louise

  Some part of the book were good, some not so.
  I appreciated each situation of each character, and each romance could have been quite good by itself, with a development more thorough.
  But I can't stand this kind of dynamic - three fast friends who share every juicy details about their love lives, drinking and being supposedly exceedingly cool - and it was especially cliché and complacent in this book.
  
  I may prefer young adult novels by the author!
• 
  Taylor

  this book made me kind of confused. it was an experience though
• 
  Succubooks

  3 stars.
  
  Not bad . . .could've had a little more knitting in it. Definitely had more "influence" then knitting.
• 
  Jamie Barringer (Ravenmount)

  On the surface this novel is a standard piece of 'women's literature', a book telling a story about women, for women, and the sort of book my mom reads far too often, and that gets my hackles up. After all, I read books written about men and that may have in more sexist times been expected to be read by men, so what makes this 'women's lit' stuff different? Is it impossible for a man to enjoy a book about women? I don't think so, and I think that the issues addressed in this novel are ones a man might be interested in too. Actually, for men dealing with raising an autistic child or men who have autistic siblings, this book might be a good read.
  
  So, while I, the eternal tomboy at heart, had a hard time getting into this novel, and never really liked the three main protagonists, I did actually enjoy the book enough to recommend it to others, even men. I wish that the characters were less caricatured, and maybe that there were fewer main story arcs so that the remaining story could be developed more fully; I do find that a common failing of 'chick lit' is that it is carocatured and shallow, in the sense of not being fully developed, and this novel, to me, seemed a perfect example of this. I also was annoyed that autism in this novel is treated as if it is always very visible and severely abnormal looking to non-autistic people. The way autism is treated in this book is otherwise very good, but not all autistic people scream and refuse to speak as kids, and not all autistic adults turn into obese couch potatoes without treatment. There is a spectrum of severity for autism, and the autistic characters in LaZebnik's book only portray a couple presentations of the overall spectrum of this disorder.
  
  But, it is also not Claire LaZebnik's job to educate the world about autism, and for what it is, she did a nice job of providing a somewhat nuanced perspective on disability in our society and on autism in particular. And, while I wish more 'chick lit' authors wrote towards a mixed audience, not just toward whatever women are supposed to like reading, it is also not this one author's job to change the genre. Chick lit sells, and for the genre this one is not bad. There are no knitting patterns (which will disappoint my mom), but I'm sure some readers really enjoy the cocktail recipes at the end of the book, and for women who are more like the protagonists this will probably be a great read.
• 
  Susan

  UGH! I hate it when authors treat me, the reader, as if I am an idiot. I think LaZebnik thinks her readers are morons - though since I could feel my brain melting while reading this book, perhaps she was just trying to help by compensating for this effect? - as the author repeatedly, and tediously, told us 'who' the three protagonists were each and every time any of them was mentioned. My thoughts were, 'OK, I get this one is insecure about her weight and eating poorly because of it', 'I get this one is a shallow, promiscuous alcoholic', 'I get the other one feels angst over her feelings about her brother's mental challenges'. PLEASE, please, please, STOP hitting me on the head with these three hammers, really I GET it you can stop telling me about it EVERY time any of their names are mentioned. This writing strategy was overdone to the point that the three women, and really all of the supporting cast, stopped being characters and became caricatures of themselves.
  
  My suspicion is that part of the reason that the author kept hitting me on the head with those hammers is that the characters seemed one-dimensional and shallow - there was nothing more to them except these bits that were tediously repeated over, and over, and over again. Additionally, none of the women were very likeable. I could not understand why any of the men in the book liked any of them, because I disliked them all.
  
  Finally, there was nothing redeeming in the, ahem, "plot". By the time all of the characters were introduced the entire plot was completely predictable, actually before all of the characters were introduced as the reader can tell what will happen even without knowing who the eventually-appearing man would be. There were so many trite plot ploys that I cannot list them all here, but as one example, 'there must be tension between people before they can eventually be together (no this is NOT a spoiler - see my point on the utter predictability of the book above) so I will add a fake reason for them to fight first', and so on. UGH!!
  
  Yes, I could feel my brain melting while reading this book. I have no idea why I finished it, and regret doing so. Overall, the book was a tedious, annoying read. Certainly, I will avoid other books by this author.
• 
  Jennifer Johnson

  I didn't have to think when I bought this book. THE TITLE includes the word "knitting"- and so it seems I was destined to pick this off the shelf at some moment. It combines the two things I love most, "fiction" and "knitting"- HOW COULD IT GO WRONG!??
  
  So, of course it goes wrong.
  
  Clarie's Lazebnik's book Knitting Under the Influence immediately grabbed my attention because it seems the only thing I love more than habitually knitting these days is talking about it ceaselessly. (Lucky you!) The story follows the lives of three twentysomething girls who belong to a Sunday knitting circle. As their projects grow, so do their friendship as they brave the ups and downs of relationships. Simply put- this baby is CHICK LIT in it's purest form.
  
  I'll be honest- I didn't HATE this book with a passion, it just didn't really strike me as something I found all that memorable or lasting. I think I've grown really tired of the standard "chick lit" girls need boys formula... and the books that are really standing out these days are the ones that are able to shock me a little and challenge me. This book was light and fluffy, and extremely predictable. I find I give up pretty early when I can tell you EXACTLY what's going to happen to all the characters 3 pages in.
  
  Knitters will also be disappointed, as I had hoped that it would include more knitting conversation- a little more Yarn Harlot crossed with a story- and it wasn't that at all. In fact mentions of knitting were very small and basic- and while I understand that books need to appeal to a wide audience and not just the yarn obsessed, I kind of feel like it's trying to "suck in" those who will see knitting in the title and buy it for that alone.
  
  I'm giving this book a rather "meh" 4/10- I did enjoy reading it in some parts, but mainly I found it very easy to predict what was going to happen and utterly unchallenging. (Knitters beware... Yarn Harlot she ain't!)
• 
  Amanda

  I had my doubts when I started reading this book. I wasn't sure how well a knitting book would translate into a contemporary, chick-lit type of novel. I love to knit, I just wasn't sure how it would translate into novel form. Then, after I started reading, I wasn't sure if I'd like it in general, not because the writing was bad, but because the characters were a little hard to relate to. The author didn't go into great detail about them, choosing to give them substance as she told their individual stories.
  
  In the end, the book was really enjoyable.
  
  The story is about three friends who meet once a week for their knitting circle, and the story is what happens in each of their lives during the interim weeks. Kathleen is out on her own for the first time after living and working with her famous actress twin sisters. Lucy is dating a fellow research assistant but is finding she disagrees more and more with his views on pretty much everything. Sari is working with the autistic son of someone she knew in high school who has an interest in her but she can't get over the fact that he was one of the ones who made fun of her brother in school.
  
  The individual love stories are cute and while they're predictable based on the kind of book this is, the author doesn't spend alot of time on foreshadowing. The side characters are just as good if not better than the main characters. What's well developed about the three girls is their friendship and the little ways in which they show their love for each other.
  
  The girls are not always likable, however, and they're not developed enough for the reader to love them. But the story is light and fluffy and ended up being a late night "can't put it down" read for me.
  
  
• 
  Katherine

  Knitting Under the Influence is about three friends in their mid-twenties who have a knitting club together and support each other through various trials in their personal and work lives.
  
  Kathleen is the wild-child and the odd one out in a sibling relationship with her other triplet sisters. They are identical and she not. They are also short and have a flagging movie career that they started as children. (I kept picturing them as the Olsen twins and her deadbeat father as Michael Lohan.) She's worked for her sisters as a kind of assistant for years, but gets into an argument with them early on in the book and ends up on her own for the first time in her life. She decides to find herself a rich husband.
  
  Lucy was once insecure and struggling with her weight, but is now a fit, smart research scientist--who still seems a bit insecure. She is in a relationship with a handsome fellow scientist, but he's in some trouble with local student animal activists. He's also a bit of a know-it-all and appears to hate kittens.
  
  Sari works with autistic children and finds herself both intrigued and repelled by the father of a boy she begins to help. He is a former high school classmate who she remembers picking on her own autistic brother.
  
  While this book heavily features Kathleen, Lucy, and Sari's relationship issues, one of the things I like most about Claire LaZebnik's writing is that she also emphasizes the importance of the girls' friendship with each other, and explores family dynamics and personal growth. She even touches on some hot button topics, thematically connecting Lucy's issues with animal research and Sari's job helping autistic children with behavior therapy. I definitely liked this book and plan to read the rest of LaZebnik's novels.
• 
  Alyson Miers

  I'd rate this higher if the handling of the characters' romantic storylines didn't gross me out so much.
  
  For all that Jason has supposedly become so much more sensitive and humble since high school, he certainly lives to disregard Sari's boundaries and refusals. We're told that Sari is leading him on, but what I see happening is that Sari is trying to be professional, and Jason keeps pushing her to give in. He keeps pushing her way, way more times than would be understandable from a guy who's giving her a chance to say yes.
  
  And then, Kathleen's interest in Sam would make a lot more sense if not for his constantly belittling her. I guess it doesn't really count as abuse when he does it, because Kathleen never seems to FEEL insulted or belittled around Sam, but...seriously? This is what she wants in a relationship? Why? The book never gets around to developing Sam and Kathleen's rapport enough to show us what it is that makes Sam an appealing mate for Kathleen. He's a cranky, unpleasant neat-freak who keeps a comfortable apartment.
  
  Also, the book's approach to portraying autism, focused on Jason's son and Sari's brother, could have been a lot worse, but it also leaves a lot of room for improvement.
  
  It's NOT a badly written or boring book. It's almost 400 pages and yet it's a super-quick, engrossing read. I root for the three friends and their weekly knitting circle. I'm just not so impressed with the men in their lives.
• 
  Vandrion

  I was buying books at Barnes and Noble for school and came across this one in the Bargain Books section - so I bought it! Can't wait to read it, but I have school to focus on for now.
  
  Ok, so I've just finished this book (last night at probably 11 ish) and it was GREAT! I just love when an author takes multiple people as their main characters and follows their lives, connecting them in some way; by knitting in this book. I kept wanting to learn to knit!
  I love that Kathleen ended up with Sam, I really wanted that to happen. I really thought she was going to marry Kevin for a while (but I thought they'd end up getting divorced as soon as they got home). As much as I wanted to hate Jason as much as Sari did, I couldn't! I just kept feeling bad for him whenever she was mean to him. And thank god Lucy got rid of whats-his-name. I don't even remember because I didn't like him that much. David's so much better! I picture him as the kind of nerdy looking guy who all of a sudden she found to be so adorable!
  I LOVE the last two lines:
  

  "No one's ever knit anything for me before"

  
  

  "That makes us even," she (Kathleen) said. "I've never knit anything for anyone before."
• 
  Tephra

  I didn't care much for Kathleen or Lucy when they were first introduced and only kept reading because Sari was more tolerable. Which I find rather amusing since by the end of the book it was close to being the other way around, Sari was on my nerves and Kathleen was sympathetic. Lucy was improved simply by dealing more with David than with James. I still wish James had walked in front of a bus.
  
  Some of the knitting felt like sections of my NaNoWriMo efforts, grafted (heh) in to stretch the word count. I think I may have put a dent in my desk when Lucy decided to knit an infamous Boyfriend Sweater though.
• 
  Erin

  I loved this book. I read it in literally 7 days because I couldn't put it down. I love knitting and love the occasional cocktail so putting the two together makes a good combination. I loved the three different stories of the girls and their friendship. Also I like how it ended nicely. I hate when books leave you hanging. Makes you realize that life isn't too difficult as long as you have friends to help and support you. I can't tell too much about it though because that would be spoiling.
• 
  Becky

  Inexcusably awful chicklit -- very few scenes read convincingly, the dialogue and ideas are cliche and surface deep, and the characters are adorned with silly traits/gimmicks to make them distinguishable from one another but the move is unsuccessful. The plotline, though obvious from the first chapter, is executed quite poorly; the final chapter is particularly cringeworthy. I tend to like occasionally reading some brain junk food, but this wasn't even enjoyable.
• 
  Dawncox314

  This was a an okay book that I forced myself to finish. It was about four friends that enjoy getting together every Sunday gossipping and knitting, two things that always go together. But there were times that I wanted to reach in the book and smack the crap out of each of the characters. This book is a chick book, so if you are a big fan of those you will like it.
• 
  Danielle

  Sam, Jeff, James, Jason, Jackson, Kevin, David. Seriously, I really had trouble with all the male characters' names. Definitely needed some variety.
  
  I enjoyed the book, sure. And the women's friendship was fun. The romance story lines were definitely predictable. Mostly entertaining. But there were a couple things.
  
  I had a bit of trouble liking and/or caring about Kathleen. Oh, you don't want to work for your rich, famous sisters anymore? Here's a giant free apartment and a new job for you. Then she decides to marry rich and her scheme actually goes according to plan? Yikes. I would have loved to see her learn and grow a bit more throughout.
  
  The book feels a bit...dated? Huge cringe with Sari saying, "He needs to eat meat and chicken and cheese." Um, no. No one needs to eat those things. And chicken is meat. And then they proceed to *force* a four-year-old to *put his tongue on a steak.* Egads. Why couldn't it have been a carrot or broccoli or brown rice instead of white?
  
  Lucy's disordered eating was also a bit much to take. Then of course when she's with the right guy, she eats. Great.
  
  And all the earnest conversation about looks and sex and money and whether or not to get married. Like seriously wondering whether to marry someone you don't love. What is that? And way too much of fat is bad, hairy is bad, money is good.
  
  Maybe it's because I'm not twenty-seven anymore, but I feel like if this book were written now, there would be a lot of changes.
  
• 
  Debbie Levine

  Knitting Under the Influence bu Claire LaZebnik is an easy, breezy chick lit novel about three twenty something young women, their love lives, careers, and shared love of knitting. It's also about, loyalty, friendship and ultimately figuring out who you are and what you want.
  
  Kathleen is the fun one. Beautiful, flighty and full of life, Kathleen has spent years living off of her famous actress sisters. When she ultimately moves out, she misses the life she had and also realizes that she has no real marketable skills. Lucy is a Scientist, a lab rat so to speak. Overweight as a teenager and theough her college years, she is dating the man of her dreams a gorgeous, brilliant scientist named James, but Lucy comes to realize that underneath it all James has some flaws of his own. Last but not least, there is Sari. A therapist specializing in autistic children, Sari reconnects with the "it" boy from High School and as an adult, he is sensitive, kind, gorgeous with an adorable autistic son to boot, but can Sari forgive him for the injustices bestowed on her autistic brother years before?
  
  Bonded through their knitting, they look to each other for support, friendship and advice and are there for each other through thick and thin.
• 
  Meg

  A library book fair find....that kept falling off my counter into my kitchen. I was too lazy to put it up, so I started reading it. A simple chick lit, under the title of "knitting"...why not? I need some fluff.
  This is the story of three friends who supposedly gather together once a week to knit. Really--- it is an excuse to drink alcohol and get a reader to buy the book....because knitting is not truly that prevalent in this book (it could have been left out in my opinion). Along with getting together, of course there are relationships...boys and neighbors, and rich children....all who need to be dated and debated. I had a hard time really caring what most of the characters did and I only really cared about one story....and even that one was "eh".
  I did appreciate that this author took on autism and knew her stuff. She obviously loves someone (spoiler: her son) with autism and has done her research (she wrote a book with a doctor)....I just wish she had worked more of her knowledge into the book and left out some of the characters (lame, lame sporty girl with famous triplet sisters)...I need to learn that with chick lit you just read, enjoy and don't think too much about the storyline...or something like that.
  Read: if you enjoy fluff. This was a fun escape.
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  LyndaIn Oregon

  Better-than-average three-young-women-finding-love chicklit. The difference is that the characters actually manage to grow up a little over the course of the book.
  
  LaZebnik has a breezy style and chooses the background and a main plot point from topics she understands. (Read the "About the Author" section if you're interested.) The point is that the knitting components of the book are natural rather than feeling grafted on (sorry; a little knitting pun there), and the sections dealing with autistic children are spot-on.
  
  One of the women, Sari, was driven to work with autistic children because her brother is afflicted. As the story progresses, she has to re-evaluate everything she thought she understood about her motivations.
  
  Lucy's medical research work fits well with her mildly OCD personality, but circumstances push her off a path she thought was carefully defined.
  
  And Kathleen, the carefree, impulsive, and easily-bored member of the trio has to figure out the difference between burning bridges and building them.
  
  It's still a breezy read, but it won't leave you with a sugar-hangover.