Reviewed by Sadonna
TITLE: Karma Kitty Christmas
AUTHOR: Amy Lane
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 282 pages
RELEASE DATE: November 4, 2024
BLURB:
Isaac Browning is the picture of a melancholy widower, knitting to soothe his sorrows. One day, his neighbor’s handsome grandson, Luca, asks him an innocent Why does knitting that sweater make your face scrunch up like that?
The answer pours Isaac is drowning in bitterness, stuck reliving the death throes of his failed marriage and the twist of fate that kept him from fixing his own life before his late husband’s death spared him the trouble.
Luca has always been the king of “I got this.” From getting kicked out of the house at eighteen to starting his own business or taking care of his awesome grandparents, Luca has taken what life throws at him. But Luca’s suddenly single sister is going to have a baby, and Isaac and his yarny hobby are an unexpected godsend. In spite of Isaac’s issues, he’s really amazing company.
Together, the two men start an unlikely friendship. Luca thinks Isaac is a sweetly chaotic mess, and Isaac is utterly smitten with Luca’s kindness, but they both need to straighten out their own lives before they can start something real. Except life is seldom that neat and tidy. Life is a messy yarn box of a thousand colors—bossy students, pregnant sisters, awesome friends, and the best (and worst) of family knit themselves into a tapestry that binds the two men together. Then the cosmic cat distribution system provides Isaac with a catnip-addicted orange kitty as the first step in building a life that’s uniquely his own. With a little bit of growing and some help from Euclid, Luca and Isaac learn that something real is what you make of it, and with a little bit of elbow grease, the possibilities are as sturdy and as beautiful as their wildest dreams.
REVIEW:
Oh this is a delightful story 🙂 This is a very Amy Lane story and I’m totally here for it.
Luca and Isaac seem like they don’t have a lot in common on paper. Isaac is a widower who lives next door to Luca’s grandparents’ house. Luca has a contracting business and he’s updating his grandparents’ home for sale. He has always enjoyed watching Isaac work on his yarn projects on his porch. When he sees Isaac working on something that clearly is making him unhappy, he stops to chat. He knows that Isaac is a widower. But what he doesn’t know is that Isaac was not happy in his marriage and that Todd, his husband was controlling and didn’t seem to care what Isaac wanted. In pretty much anything. He belittled his job, his yarn projects, his taste . . . well you get the idea. But Isaac feels guilty about being so angry with a dead man.
Luca is a breath of fresh air for Isaac, but he’s got his own issues. He’s trying to run a business and his younger sister is pregnant and her boyfriend dumped her so she’s moved into his tiny apartment with him. Not great. But his friendship with Isaac is blossoming and Isaac is making a baby blanket for Allegra and Luca wants to help. The more time they spend together, the more Luca really wants more than friendship.
Then there is Isaac’s job as a high school math teacher. His work BFF, Roxy, is also a math teacher. And a mom of three kids in diapers. They are working on trying to make the world a better place, one teenager at a time. And Roxy (and her husband Brian) are the best found family for Isaac. Also not Todd fans.
There is a stray orange cat, yarn projects as extra credit problems to solve, lovely grandparents. There are also hard to deal with parents who kicked out their son when he came out and an unexpected pregnancy that is the impetus for a move in with Isaac. There is coming into one’s own later in life after rediscovering joy and a purpose and relationship that is completely unexpected. There is love and support and humor and so much yarn 😉
This book reminds me of why I love Amy Lane. These characters are funny and flawed and real and just good people. Not perfect people, but people who want to try to make a difference. They support their friends, they call things out, the love hard and they do make the world a better place – even if it’s just their little corner. If everybody was trying harder to make their little corners a bit more kind, a bit more forgiving, a bit more colorful, a bit more fun and bit more loving, I think we would all benefit. Such a lovely group of people that I just wanted to see get their rewards in THIS life 😀 Highly recommended for those looking for some love, hope and happiness in a world that seem to be a bit lacking right now.
RATING: 
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