Title: Knit, Purl, a Baby and a Girl Author: Hettie Bell
Published: March 30, 2021
Genre(s): Romance: Contemporary
Page Count: 336
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Some people can’t wait to have babies. They’re ready for it—with their perfect lives and their pregnancy glow…
Poppy Adams doesn’t have a perfect life, and she wasn’t ready for the positive test. An unexpected baby—Poppy’s unexpected baby—won’t exactly have her family doing cartwheels. But she’s making the right choice.
Right?
Poppy’s totally got this. She just needs a little encouragement, and a knitting group is the perfect place to start. Baby blankets, booties, tiny little hats—small steps toward her new life. But she feels like she’s already dropped a stitch when she discovers the knitting group is led by the charismatic Rhiannon.
It’s not exactly a great time to meet the woman who might just be the love of her life. While the group easily shuffles around to make room for Poppy, it’s not so easy fitting her life and Rhiannon’s together. With the weeks counting down until her baby arrives, Poppy’s going to have to decide for herself what truly makes a family.
I had a blinding moment of self-unawareness when I picked up Knit, Purl, a Baby and a Girl. “Oh, f/f romance!!!” I said excitedly as I one-clicked on the library website—completely forgetting that (a) I don’t knit and (b) I strongly dislike reading about pregnancy/childbirth/babies. Genius, Renae. Pure genius.
It was only about one-fourth of the way into the book, when I was getting rather irritated by the constant focus on protagonist Poppy’s pregnancy that I realized what I’d done. Duh. Don’t go to the waterpark and complain that you’re wet. Likewise: don’t read a romance novel about a surprise pregnancy and complain that…there’s a surprise pregnancy.
In my defense, I got really excited about reading an f/f romance!
Luckily for me, I enjoyed Knit, Purl, a Baby and a Girl quite a lot. Taken for what it is, this is a strongly written, introspective novel about a millennial woman’s delayed coming of age and reckoning with her toxic, gaslighty family—with a side-helping of romance. For reasons to be discussed below, I consider this book to be more in the line of a women’s fiction novel than a romance novel, but I wasn’t necessarily disappointed because of that.
Author Hettie Bell writes in first person, solely from the perspective of Poppy, our accidentally pregnant main character. I think Poppy’s voice was well-done, particularly considering her crippling lack of self-confidence and toxic self-narrative. There’s a lot going on in this book, but a big component is Poppy’s relationship with her manipulative, emotionally abusive mother and how that’s affected her ability to live independently as an adult. Not gonna lie, at times Poppy’s anxiety spirals and derogatory thoughts about herself were almost too much to swallow, simply because of how strong they were, but as someone who has experienced very similar mother/daughter dynamics as Poppy, I admit I was a tad bit triggered. Basically, Poppy’s internal monologue hurt, but in the way it was meant to.
Most of Knit, Purl, a Baby and Girl is about Poppy reclaiming control—control over her life and her future, but also control over her conception of herself. Her mother has told her she’s a lazy, useless person who has failed to achieve the American Dream (husband, house, 6-figure salary) only because of her lack of application. But over the course of the book, Poppy comes to understand not only that she isn’t a disappointing underachiever, but that maybe her mother’s idea of who she should be isn’t even the end goal. Case in point: at the beginning of the novel, Poppy is dead-set on getting an abortion, but after speaking with the providers at Planned Parenthood, she realizes that she’d rather keep the baby, and it was only her mother’s voice in her head that convinced her she wasn’t equipped to be a parent. After all: she has a stable job, health insurance, and a studio in New York. The idea that she needs a swanky doula and 50k in savings before having kids is her mother’s hang-up, not hers.
Everything with respect to Poppy’s character and her internal growth was incredibly well done. Even when she was acting poorly and letting her trauma get the best of her, I was right there with her, and I was sympathetic to even her worst decisions. I cannot emphasize enough what a fantastically written character Hettie Bell created here.
Yet you’ll notice that amid all this discussion…I haven’t once mentioned Poppy’s love interest, the butch lesbian barista / knitting aficionado, Rhiannon. You know why? Because this isn’t Rhiannon’s story. And it’s not Poppy and Rhiannon’s love story, either. This is a book about Poppy, and Poppy alone. Yes, Rhiannon is there, and yes, the budding romance with Rhiannon is a major element of the plot…but it’s not really the focus. Particularly: we only see Rhiannon through Poppy’s eyes, because she’s the narrator. Bell doesn’t set Rhiannon up as a second protagonist, or even as someone who exists independently from Poppy. Although she’s a fully developed character, the only information we get about Rhiannon is filtered through Poppy’s thoughts. Most of her backstory, her feelings, and her hang-ups are left blank. And that’s why I don’t think you can properly characterize this as a romance novel—not only is the romantic arc not the main focus of the text, only one-half of the couple is given sufficient page-time to be fully understood by readers.
I would like to say that I think it’s possible to write a successful romance novel where the entire story is told in first person from a single character’s perspective (Thirsty by Mia Hopkins comes to mind), but that’s not the case with Knit, Purl, a Baby and a Girl. Poppy’s pregnancy, self-confidence issues, and family relationships were the driving force behind most of the action, and those are all issues that are personal to Poppy (even when they affect Rhiannon as well). For understandable reasons, Poppy’s narration is self-centered and heavily internalized. This is good! It’s just not conducive for writing a capital-R Romance Novel.
So, I think this book has been badly marketed, and I don’t think it should have been put out as part of the Carina Adores line, which is focused on releasing tropey category-length romance novels with LGBTQ leads. I truly think this is a good book! But it would have found a better audience if it had been put out in trade format under a general fiction imprint instead.
Good book, misleading marketing; ultimately, not a romance.
