Review of ‘Tight knit’ by Shaya Crabtree

3.25 Stars. Even with some issues, I did like this lesbian second chance romance more than I expected. I have to admit I did not have high expectations for this book. I had already read another author’s (Matthews) book about crochet called Hooked on You. And while I surprisingly really liked that book, I did not think I needed to go read a book about knitting. There is only so much yarn I can handle. Only because of the consistently high quality of books YLVA puts out did I decide to take a chance on this anyway. And I’m actually glad I did. I thought this was a good step-up from Crabtree’s debut which was a struggle for me. I also thought the style of writing and storytelling was well done and with a few changes, this book could have been at least 4 stars.

My biggest issue was how angry one of the mains Lara was. Now I have to be clear that Lara had every right to be angry with what her life and past has been like and I sympathized with her. The problem was it took too long for her to actually make any growth as a character and not be so angry. I kept thinking, I get it, I understand, I’m still with you Lara. But it soon became GET OVER IT ALREADY! It was just too much and it took too long so I ended up not really liking a character that I had understood for the first half.

While I liked the storytelling and flow of the book, I had one issue with the writing. Crabtree wrote this in third person but only one point of view. In my opinion, the whole idea of third person is to be in the POV of at least two characters. If you are choosing only one POV you might as well write in first person so as a reader I can really connect with the character. This third-person, one POV is for the birds. Not having any POV from Paige was tough. I could not understand why she liked Lara so much when Lara was so angry all the time. I needed to feel their connection from Paige’s side.

The last issue was while this is a second chance romance, the chemistry needed a boost. I needed to understand why these two used to be a great couple so I could believe they deserved a second chance. There is very little physical intimacy at all including no sex scenes. While I prefer steamy sex screens, I’m okay sometimes when books don’t have any. But in this book, I felt the sex scene was really missing. I needed to see Lara let down her guard and show physical love.

While this review is mostly complaints, I really did like this more than expected. Just a few changes and I would have really enjoyed this. Heck even just changing the constant Lara anger and this would have been so much better. On the good side, this makes me excited about Crabtree’s next book. If she just keeps improving with every new story I really think she is going to have some hits on her hands. She is almost there she just needs a little more work.

An ARC was given to me for an honest review.