Witty Little Knitter

First of all I must openly admit that from the blurb alone I would naver have bought the book...but as it was free I was willing to give it a try and ended up being pleasently surprised despite of some issues.
First of all I had some trouble with the characters. I liked them, but not as much as e.g. Mac and Tony in Life Lessons. Chris' lying annoyed me...he was talking to Ian and angsting about what would happen if he ever finds out that Chris' parents aren't really dead and I wanted to yell "Well, just tell him you don't want to talk about the topic right now. He'd understand." But instead he just keeps lying...so it was hard feeling sorry for him. Yes, later we learn more about Chris' backstory which to an extend explains his behaviour but like Ian, I wasn't willing to forgive him completely. That should have made me sympathize with Ian more, but somehow, even though I agreed with his overall views, I got kind of annoyed with the exact way he phrased it. It's hard to explain...there was simply a holier-than-thou-attitude that I wasn't happy with.
(Oh, and can we talk about Ian's father for a moment? OK, apparently all his children turned out fine, and Ian seems to love him...I still won't buy this guy a dad-of-the-year mug).

I also found the romance part a bit...hm...rushed. A quick one-night-stand that ends in much yelling but they can't stop thinking about each other? Really? OK, I know it's only 250 pages and there needs to be enough space for the rest of the angsty plot and it's not like any of the romances I read recently lost too much time...but you know in those there was at least some talking and meeting more than once involved before the constantly-thinking-about-each-other started.
Then there was the stalker-storyline...I also had problems there but I guess that can be blamed on the fact that I'm too much of a crime/mystery-reader, so I just expected it to have more weight, but it simply wasn't the main focus of the story but just used as set-up for even more angst. Still it was all a bit too convenient (the letters just happend to stop while Ian and Chris were together).
And for a finaly thing...and I do feel terrible about being that nit-picky but it is one of my pet-peeves in books:
So Chris lets slip that he has a fiancee, Ian is pissed off and doesn't give him a chance to explain. So far so good. They meet again Ian asks again about it, Christ almost tells him but gets distracted...a bit later they touch the topic again and get distracted again before Chris can tell. Granted: the next try actually succeeds. And yes there are books that drag this kind of stuff out even more but that does not change that it drives me always mad, no matter if it just used a little. I can't help it.

So overall these are just minor issues...and yeah saying 'I didn't like Ian and Chris as much as Mac and Tony' is complaining on a damn high level and well, I did stay up till long past two o'clock because the finale was so incredibly thrilling (one thing I already liked a lot in Life Lessons...the finale isn't some guy waving his guy around for 5 pages...it's grand). I'm not terribly sad that it's a stand-alone (so far?) and I won't see those two again but I did spent some incredibly engaging hours with them and had fun ^^.