Knit in Comfort: A Novel

by Isabel Sharpe

A wonderful novel from Isabel Sharpe, the author of As Good As it Got, Knit in Comfort joins the women of Comfort, North Carolina, as they come together to knit and make lace–and find that the intricacies of both echo the complexities of their own lives. A story that combines the popular pastime of crafting and a richly realized cast of unforgettable characters, Knit in Comfort is a heartwarming tale of love and friendship that every fan of Debbie Macomber, Kate Jacobs, and Ann Hood is certain to cherish.

Genres: Knitting, Fiction, Chick Lit, Southern, Contemporary, Romance, Novels

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Isabel Sharpe began writing in 1994 after leaving her job to raise her son. A former “bored housewife,” she has authored over twenty Harlequin novels and now writes women-focused fiction for Avon/HarperCollins, embracing her unexpected career.

Reviews

[Carole at From My Carolina Home · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dumb, dumb, dumb!!! Sorry, but no woman would put up with a husband who had another wife and kids in an other town unless she signed up for that in the first place. To think she would live with it without complaint for 15 years is just beyond the pale. This whole storyline was just off the deep end. Megan is a doormat until Elizabeth, an irritating busybody, rents an apartment over Megan's garage. From the impossible dialogue, to the unrealistic situations, this one is better left on the shelf.

[Ciara · Rating 2 out of 5]

i had a really hard time getting into this book because it opens with a knitting circle (with the kind of witty name purls before wine), which introduces us to the main character, megan, & a whole bunch of other ladies all at once. i had a really hard time keeping all the characters straight. the characterization was not strong. it wasn't even apparent for a while that megan actually was the main character. i kind of wanted to put the book down & stop reading, & i would have if i was the kind of reader that can just give up like that.

so, i guess from the outside, megan looks like she has a great life. she has a loving husband who unfortunately isn't home much because he's a traveling salesman (that's still a real job)? she has three children, ages 15 through 9. she has a cute homey house in comfort, north carolina, a small idyllic town where megan finished her last year of high school. she's about 40 now, & she has her weekly knitting group. she isn't always stimulated by the level of conversation that takes place at these meetings--sometimes she wishes they talked more about books, art, & culture. but she's a go along to get along kid of lady & not big on the complaints.

she has a garage apartment she's trying to rent out, & this is where elizabeth comes into the story. weirdly, elizabeth is kind of a manic pixie dream girl for megan, but not in a romantic way. elizabeth blows into town because her dead grandmother came to her in a dream & told her to "find comfort". her famous french chef boyfriend is pressuring her to marry him, & she is freaking out & needs to figure some shit out. she hears the words "comfort, north carolina" on the radio, & flies down. she finds the flyer about megan's garage apartment & comes to see it.

elizabeth immediately grated on my nerves. she babbles to megan about her dead grandmother's instructions, which would cause me to insist that the apartment had already been rented. megan offers supper with the family as part of the rental package, but elizabeth makes herself right at home at breakfast, winning over the kids & megan's uptight mother-in-law. she asks obnoxious invasive questions of everyone she meets & is just exactly the kind of person i'd hate to have hanging around. did someone say 'entitlement issues"? & yet, the way the book is written, i don't think the reader is supposed to hate elizabeth.

elizabeth is fucking dumbass who thinks everything in comfort is perfect & wonderful--especially megan & her perfect family. megan has all this hand-knitted lace all over her house, & elizabeth is all, "ooh, so pretty! teach me how to knit it!" but it turns out megan hasn't knitted the lace in fifteen years. she kind of gets bullied into teaching elizabeth how to make it, & it brings up all these shitty feelings about why she stopped.

apparently she stopped when she was pregnant with her oldest & was planning a vow renewal ceremony with her husband, stanley. that was when she found out that stanley secretly had a second family. what? who does that? & she just rolled with it. granted, she canceled the vow renewal ceremony, but she didn't leave him, because she was knocked up & didn't know how to support herself on her own. supposedly this is a contemporary book. megan is not from 1843, so i don't understand. my partner having a second family would probably be a dealbreaker even if i was pregnant with triplets.

blah blah blah. elizabeth somehow finds out about stanley's second family. that's right, she's in town for three weeks & she manages to figure out this secret megan has been keeping for fifteen years. for some reason, now megan finds the arrangement unbearable & kicks stanley out. then elizabeth encourages her to meet the other wife. megan does so & discovers that wife #2 is basically a clone of megan. it really pisses her off that this other woman isn't even all that special or beautiful or glamorous & she decides to divorce stanley. on the ride back to comfort, elizabeth finds a truffle farm & convinces her boyfriend to live part time in north carolina & harvest local truffles for his restaurant, & in exchange, she will marry him. huh?

there's some other crap in here, with a lace wedding shawl, & some kind of shetland supernatural mermaid thing, but whatever. this book is ridiculous. i don't know why i read it. it wasn't TERRIBLE...it was just kind of thin on making me give a fuck.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

From My Blog...[return][return]As a knitter I had high hopes for Knit In Comfort by Isabel Sharpe. The novel, and each subsequent chapter, begins with excerpts from Megan Morgan’s great-grandmother Fiona, who lived in the Shetland Isles. The excerpts are brilliant and would make a wonderful book as Fiona’s life interested me, as did her lace making. However Knit In Comfort is about Megan Morgan who is dreadfully unhappy and yet complacent in her unhappiness. Her husband Stanley travels a lot, she has three children to care for and her mother-in-law recently moved in. Megan has been attending the same knitting group, Purls Before Wine, for two decades and yet does not enjoy it. If that is not enough, the Morgans need money and are renting out their garage apartment. Enter Elizabeth Detlaff, a New Yorker who had a dream where her grandmother told her to find comfort, so she heads to Comfort, North Carolina while her boyfriend is in France for the month, he has handed her an ultimatum and she needs time and distance to think through her life. Sharpe expertly describes the characters and while I personally did not care for most of them, I did enjoy how she chose to have the characters progress with the storyline and at times I found myself pleasantly surprised at how a character I did not care for in the beginning became one I truly liked toward the end. Sharpe’s writing style is comfortable and welcomes the reader into the story. The ending was worth the read and I did immensely enjoy learning about Fiona, her life, struggles, her friend Gillian, and lace making. Even though Knit In Comfort was not exactly my style, I do believe a lot of readers will enjoy the small town of Comfort and the secrets buried within, and I think I would have liked it better had I been discussing the novel with a group. Please read other reviews as well since mine is just one opinion amongst many.

[Lorrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I began to first read (I confess I picked up this used paperback simply because it was about knitting), I was a little depressed because I was afraid this book just wasn't going to live up to my expectations. The cover was sort of sappy and the characters were all running in together. I couldn't figure out what was going on. I'm sure glad I kept reading. Elizabeth, a NY transplant renting from Megan & trying to find herself, travels to the town of Comfort, North Carolina, after dreaming about her grandmother and her message of "seeking comfort". Elizabeth rents from Megan who is about as stony faced and closed off as a concrete wall. Megan has three children and a disgustingly fake husband, Stanley, a pushy, sugary-sweet salesman. Stanley's mother, Vera, lives with them. Elizabeth rents the garage apartment. Megan rents to help out with the finances.

So, the stage is set and at this point I wondered why I kept reading because it just sounds so nauseating, doesn't it? Megan knits with a group "The Purls" and the lives of these fellow knitters is also encountered. Megan's neighbor, David, is usually drinking and one wonders why he is even part of the picture. Elizabeth thinks Megan's household and life are just perfect. She strives for this type of life herself, and is certain now why she couldn't continue to live in NY City with her boyfriend, Dominique, and his lifestyle. Dominique is on a food cooking TV show and travels all over the world (mainly France from where he originates) to explore his craft. He really wants to marry Elizabeth and take care of her. She wouldn't need to even work, just be there to raise his children. This doesn't entice Elizabeth. She wants instead to find herself. What is it that she wants to do with her life? And, so, the story evolves. I will say no more because at this point I became hooked and loved the book.

[Adam Zorzi · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unbelievable - really! I chose this 2010 book in 2024 because I was looking for a cozy knit story. Granted, they're never fine literature but usually about a regular knitting group & the lives of each member written by someone who knows how to knit (Sally Goldenbaum, who writes knitting mysteries admittedly doesn't knit & apparently doesn't know any editors who can correct her myriad mistakes, is an exception). This was so implausible for 21st century women even if they do live in a small town near Asheville NC, especially after living in big cities all over the country. The knitting group is composed of 40-something women who went to high school together & still act like it. The MC at first seems clinically depressed while carrying out her duties as mother to 3 kids & surviving her live-in mother-in-law. Her high school boyfriend happens to live next door drinking himself into a daily stupor after a public scandalous divorce "in the Northeast." She moons over him & recalls her mother's stories of Shetland lace knitting. She has a secret - her husband is "married" to another woman 200 miles away w/more kids that he alternates 2 weeks time that she's known about for 15 years!!!!! She's the 1st wife of a bigamist & accepts it, frets over living on 1/2 of his paycheck so much that she grows their vegetables, & doesn't want her kids to know. Who does that? Out of desperation for money, she rents out the garage apt to a visiting NYer who's finding herself because she lives off her famous boyfriend.

I couldn't believe any woman, especially one who has friends, a community, & would get alimony & child support even if she doesn't have a job, would stay w/a bigamist. Granted, her marriage was legal, but her kids had 1/2 siblings they didn't know about & the 2nd "wife" was a clone of the MC. The husband essentially had 2 comfortable homes in 2 towns & sleeps w/both women. A reader isn't supposed to think too much in cozies, but all I could think of was the 2nd family had no legal rights at all - not even health insurance when one of the kids broke a limb. Dumb, stupid, insulting.

There was some knitting but the whole bigamy storyline - complete w/the suggestion that the man had a 3rd woman whose picture he keeps close - put me off. I can't think of any reason to read this.

[Deborah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm being generous. If you want to write about anything, give your prospective readers the respect of doing at least 10 minutes worth of research. It takes less than that to determine that no one, LITERALLY NO ONE, can spin 6000 yards of yarn from one ounce of even the finest fiber. Even less time to figure out that no human has ever knit 200 stitches in one minute, and if they could, it would not take them 6 weeks to knit a shawl. Putting the word "Knit" in the title is bound to attract knitters, as we are typically a literate bunch. Therefore, one should at least try to couch one's story in some semblance of reality, rather than just tossing out numbers as though they didn't matter. I would not insult readers of a story about health care by having a character experience a "148 degree fever", or a BMI of 4. It costs very little time or effort to look up a few facts to sprinkle into one's writing. It probably takes more to create good dialogue and believable situations.

[Deb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elizabeth has 3 children, her mother in law living with her and she finds out her husband has another wife and children. Megan is lost about what to do about her life. But in a dream her grandma tells her where she should head in life. These two have a some friends that has a knitting group. As they listen to Elizabeth tell a story that her mother told her growing up they all start to relate their lives to the story. As the story is being told Elizabeth teaches them how to knit lace. These knitters begin to figure out their lives and how to go on. Read the story to see what happens. Does Elizabeth stay with her husband. Does Megan find what she wants to do with her life.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved this book. Yes the storyline is far fetched, but the characters and their relationships are so interesting, I couldn't put it down. And as I am a knitter, not very good though, it sparked an interest to try lace knitting. I originally picked the book to read fiction about knitters, and it delivered that and much more. Get past the plausibility of the storyline, and get into the characters and what they all learn about life, love, and knitting.

[book_livre~shū-libro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good, night read. No murders or anything nasty. Elizabeth’s grannie sends her messages in a dream. Elizabeth ends up in Comfort, North Carolina. She makes friends with a knitting group and the people that live in the house in front of the apt she lives in. Megan and her husband Stanley own the house. Elizabeth ends up helping Megan do something Megan never thought was possible. Good girly book.

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Women's lit. Megan's new renter Elizabeth believes that the small town of Comfort is Paradise. Her entry into Megan's knitting group changes the dynamics of the group and causes several members to examine their lives.

[Barb · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a nice cozy read. I really enjoyed the knitting part and learning about the history of Shetland lace. So very interesting. Didn't have much patience with Megan (what was she thinking for all those years??!!! - what a doormat) but did enjoy the relationships among all "The Purls".

[SeaBae · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a knitter, I am a sucker for books that feature knitting, so I swooped this one up.

However, while knitting does play a part in the story, this book is more about life in a small town where appearances are highly deceiving.

Unfortunately, the book is neither soap opera enough to make it a good guilty pleasure, nor are the characters original or well-drawn enough for the book to qualify as decent women's fiction.

The heroine, Megan, lives one of Thoreau's "lives of quiet desperation." A stay-at-home mom of three who is also saddled with a live-in mother-in-law, Megan gardens, knits and cooks supper. Her only "alive" time is the hour before her household wakes up, and the occasional conversations with her next-door neighbor and former boyfriend David. But David is going through his own dark valley of the soul as the soon-to-be-ex-husband of a famous feminist theory author, who was just exposed as a plagiarist.

Megan's husband Stanley is home only two weeks out of four. Although Stanley is the picture of a devoted husband and father, his sales job barely brings in enough money to keep the household going. So Megan decides to rent out her guest apartment.

If Megan is all quiet resignation and passive aggressiveness, Elizabeth is loud in your face aggressive aggressiveness. Somewhere in her twenties, but with the emotional restraint of a thirteen-year-old, Elizabeth is fleeing her famous French chef boyfriend and their designer-decorated Manhattan condo (it's okay, the doorman is feeding the koi) because her boyfriend gave her an ultimatum: Marry me after years of asking you, or say good-bye. A series of dreams, omens and portents leads Elizabeth to one conclusion: she must move to Comfort, North Carolina. Where, of course, she rents Megan's apartment.

Let the clash of temperaments begin. While Megan at first resents her tenant's bomb-sniffing dog-like ability to immediately locate the nearest emotional landmine (and detonate it), of course Elizabeth's "you go, girl" attitude helps free Megan from the prison that is her marriage. And free David, and their friend Ella, and their friend Sally, etc. All of which would be fine if a) Elizabeth weren't so annoying and b) Elizabeth weren't so unbelievable. Elizabeth rolled into Comfort expecting to find Mayberry RFD - but has she never heard of Twin Peaks? Blue Velvet? Heck, even Desperate Housewives? Her naivete about small town life quickly became hard-to-swallow, especially for a character whose earlier life should have made her far more street smart.

Megan is also an enigma. Stanley, is, of course, far from perfect husband. In fact, he'd fit in perfectly with the guys on HBO's Big Love, except that Megan had no idea she was a sister-wife until, as she claimed, it was too hard to leave her bigamist husband.

I know women, every day, stay in horrible relationships. I know it is hard to change your life. But this is fiction, darn it. I want my heroines to be smarter, more capable than me. And if they aren't, then I want to empathize with the choices they make. But Megan's decision to stay with Stanley - and to have two more kids with him, plus take care of his complaining mother - didn't ring true to me. I never got a sense of why Megan loved him, or why she stayed, other than Stanley is a good kisser. I mean, the guy even took her favorite coffee maker to give to his other wife! In my world, coffee is serious business and this would mean war. Megan just continues to sip the weak stuff.

The author tries to explain Megan's passiveness by giving her a peripatetic childhood, thus underscoring Megan's desire to stay in one place and raise a family in a stable community - but the author does such a good job with the calm, collected mask Megan presents to the world that the character remains at a remove from the reader.

There are some great moments in the book. I loved it when the characters are asked where they would insert a "lifeline" (a device that allows knitters to rip out mistakes without destroying the entire work) in their own lives - if they could rewind to any spot and start over, where would it be? Same when Elizabeth challenged the knitting group to tell one secret the other members don't know. At these points, the characters came alive and turned into real people. But the rest of the time, they remained as flat as the paper they were printed on (or the screen they were read on? Hmmm. Must work on my metaphors in the digital age.)

There's a framing story about Megan's Shetland forebears and selkies that is meant to add some magical realism to the novel. But again, the magic wasn't pushed far enough to put the novel into that category, either.

I really wanted to like KNIT IN COMFORT, but like its heroine Megan, it stays overlong in the comfortable, passive zone. If the emotion, or the soap opera drama, or the magical realism had been pushed further, then the novel might have really touched and moved me, or at least entertained. As it is - the Goodwill pile just got a bit higher.

[Penny G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quaint little book. The characters’ lives are filled with love, friendships, wine and lace. Though, things are not are not always as perfect as they seem.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really 3.5 stars. Easy chick lit read. I enjoyed some of the twists and turns in the story

[Bethany · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable story. It took me a little while to get into it and remember who was who. Has a good heart!

[Lynne - The Book Squirrel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read!

[Amy Lepore · Rating 5 out of 5]

I truly enjoyed the infusion of generations of women from Megan’s family along with her friends in Comfort. Loved it...read it in 4 days.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent story. Loved reading about the lace.

[Donna Francisco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved it

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book about two women and a knitting group, how their choices in life have effected them and how they have managed to move on with the strength and support of the knitting group members.

[Kathy Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Asheville NC, the general area where the story happens and I knit! An easy read with good endings and a little surprise at the end.

[Wren Goodwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was such a good book, it definitely draws you in and is the sole reason I want to knit myself a wedding shawl now.

[Meg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Isabel Sharpe’s Knit In Comfort, the latest in a string of knitting-centered novels, is a slower-than-molasses look at the disintegration of a marriage, the forging of new friendships, the creation of something beautiful — and I wanted it to work. Really, truly, I did, but something was missing.

What went wrong, really? It’s hard for me to pinpoint what I disliked so much about these people, though that powerful dislike was strong and true. Elizabeth comes across as flighty, disconnected, a young woman with no real goals or dreams of her own — and that grated on me. She grows in the story, sure, but not that much. Not enough to redeem her. In my eyes, she was nosy — a busybody. Though Megan clearly needed help getting out of a deep, deep rut, I didn’t know why Elizabeth, a bossy out-of-towner, had to be the one to do it.

And Megan. Dear, sweet, ridiculous Megan. We have the same name, see, so I’m having a hard time ripping on her, but I truly wanted to reach into the novel and give her a good slap. Not a little punch on the arm, you know, or a gentle shake. A slap. The woman is nuts. For putting up with what she’s put up with, for keeping silent about things she should never have kept silent about, for living with her pesky mother-in-law. She needed a slap. And who wants to spend 300 pages wanting to hit a character more than anything you’ve wanted to do in recent memory?

But I’m not here to bash someone’s hard work. No, Knit In Comfort wasn’t terrible — and that’s the hard part. Sharpe’s writing was clear and struck a good balance between showing-and-telling, leaving bits of the plot to the imagination and divulging pieces of a mystery at a good pace. I loved the stories of Megan’s ancestors and their difficult lives made easier by their passion for lace and knitting, a skill Megan continues. Each chapter opens with stories of Fiona, Megan’s ancestor, and the love she had for Calum — before he was enchanted by Gillian, a mysterious woman who arrives in their small town. I’m pretty sure I would have rather read an entire novel about them than this broken crew.

Still, the stories of lace-making — and the friendships here — redeemed the novel for me, and I was pleased with the book’s ending. Most of it seems fanciful, unbelievable, but I liked the peripheral characters who helped flesh out Knit In Comfort. For fans of women’s fiction seeking a strong narrative centering around knitting, I would still return to that old standard: Kate Jacobs’ The Friday Night Knitting Club.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. Southern atmosphere, a knitting group of women in their 30s who've known each other most of their lives, and a stranger who stirs things up while searching for a few answers in her own life all make for a good story.

Change is in the humid, fragrant air and I felt like I was right there watching it all start to play out. Isabel Sharpe wrote wonderful dialogue for her characters. I loved the fable that she worked into the novel. It's a story Megan's mother told her when Megan was going through a rough time in her teens. Her life, in a way, is a bit like the story - but which character is she? Five years into her marriage Megan discovered a secret but because she so desired stability, she decided to keep the secret. She decided to act as if it didn't exist. Little by little that secret has taken something, her joy, from her life.

Elizabeth is the stranger who comes to Comfort after dreaming about her grandmother who told her to look for comfort. Elizabeth is looking for answers in her life so she grabs that dream and runs with it. She rents Megan's garage apartment which also includes dinner each evening with the family. Little by little she is drawn into Megan's life. One part of her life is the Purls - the knitting group comprised of Megan's high school friends. Elizabeth is accepted as a new member and, ready or not, she asks questions that they never would have asked - and they answer. She moves them out of their comfort zone. She learns from them as well. Yes, change is in the air.

At the end I was happy to find an informative Q&A with the author.

[Libraryscat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let me begin this review with thanks to LibraryThing and Avon Publishers for providing me with the opportunity to read this book. Knit in Comfort: A Novel by Isabel Sharpe is one of many books published recently which are centered on a group of women who share knitting as a common hobby. I wanted to love this book, and while I found it engaging enough, I only liked it.[return][return]The story revolves around two women. Megan Morgan lives a settled life in Comfort, North Carolina with her husband, children, and mother-in-law. She belongs to the knitting club, Purls before Wine which meets weekly. Even though this is the life Megan wanted, she never really seems content. Needing to supplement the family income, Megan rents out the small garage apartment behind the house to Elizabeth Detlaff. Elizabeth lived in New York City with her boyfriend. In a dream, Elizabeth heard her grandmother tell her to go find comfort and she believes that is what she has done! She views Megan s life as blissfully happy until she sees beneath the surface and realized things may not be the way they seem. And isn t that true of everyone s life?[return][return]The part that made this story a little more interesting was the introduction of Megan s stories about her ancestors from the Shetland Islands in Scotland. Fiona, Megan s great-grandmother, knitted beautiful lace that seemed to tell her story. In the beginning, I was more focused on this story until I could figure out who was who. The two stories, Megan s and Fiona s, seem to flow together over the course of the book just as Megan and Elizabeth s stories do.

[Indigo Crow · Rating 2 out of 5]

I admit, being an avid knitter, the title was what drew me in initially. After having checked out the summery and reading a few pages, I decided that I would give this book a shot.

The characters are likeable enough, but have nothing that is unique about them. You have straight-laced Megan, who never wants to rock the boat or ruffle anybody's feathers, and then you have Elizabeth, who suffers a bit from foot-in-mouth syndrome. There are others as well, but again, nothing unique about them. They come together to give you the generic all-female cast many of us are familiar with already.

The story itself was decent. I enjoyed it, even though it felt a lot like a soap opera storyline than a novel. Megan is struggling with a deep, dark secret that has plagued her life for 15 years, and Elizabeth comes along to shake things up and show her how to stand up for herself and really LIVE. I always felt concern for the characters and hoped that everything would turn out well for them, but they were nothing special, and neither was the story. Often I would wish I could be reading the story that Megan told of Shetland and of Fiona and Gillian. Even the brief bits of that story we're given seemed more interesting and engaging than the main plot.

Regardless, this is a pretty good book and worth reading at least once. Especially if you're a knitter.

[WifeMomKnitter · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the blurb on the back cover:

"Megan has always longed form the comforts of home. But if her dreasm of a perfect life with her husband and children in Comfort, North Carolina, have sometimes come up short, she finds solace every time she -- along with other women of the town --takes up her knitting needles. From her hands comes beautiful creations, made out of the emotions she feels in her heart, and Megan feels like she really belongs. But then change comes to closeknit Comfort when Megan takes on a new tenant, Elizabeth. She's brash, she's bold, and she's about to unravel everything."

As a knitter, I was excited to read this book, especially because I had just started knitting lace, which the character, Megan is proficient.

While the story was good and her family's secret was a complete surprise, I thought the book could have been better. I liked how each chapter started with the story of Megan's great-grandmother, which seemed to parallel with what was going on in Megan's life. I kept wishing that the author had fleshed out the secondary characters a bit more. There were two characters mentioned in the beginning of the book that we, as the reader, never even met.

[Anita Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Megan Morgan is a gifted lace knitter, a talent passed down through three generations of her mother's family. Her great-grandmother, Fiona, lived in Eschaness on Shetland, an island near Scotland. Megan's mother told her many exciting and colorful stories of Fiona when Megan was a child and taught her how to knit lace as Fiona had. Megan always assumed her mother had a vivid imagionation but as she shares the stories with her knitting group, Purls Before Wine, in the cozy town of Comfort, NC, she connects more and more to her great-grandmother and longs for the peace of Shetland.

When Megan posts an ad for her family's garage apartment in the local coffee shop, she is shocked when exhuberant, flaky, beautiful Elizabeth from New York becomes her tenant. Elizabeth's forthright, outspoken manner rubs Megan the wrong way at first but she helps her to confront the secret she has been hiding and to regain hold of her own dreams.

This is a well-written story of human beings with all their many secrets and insecurites that are buried under a quilt of southern charm and good manners.

[Brandie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Knit in Comfort was a quick, interesting read.
Elizabeth, a young women from New York, travels to Comfort, North Carolina based on a dream in which she thinks her grandma tells her too. There she meets Megan - a wife and mother from who she rents a room.
Elizabeth views Megan's life as perfect and wonderful and the dream life she wants. However, Elizabeth doesn't realize that Megan, like everyone, is not in fact living a fairy tale and that looks can be deceiving.
But what brings them together - along with some other women in town - is knitting. And through knitting, they are able to work through some of the issues they are facing.
While learning about Megan and Elizabeth and the women in Comfort, Sharpe also draws us in with the story of Gillian and Fiona, which takes place in the early 1900's on the Shetland Island. Fiona is a relative of Megan's and so we learn part of Megan's family's history as we learn about Megan.

As a knitter I was quite drawn to the talk of knitting - and the mention of the gorgeous lace knitting that Megan (and her family) does. I'm not sure what drew me in more - thinking about the beautiful lace knitting they referred to or the story honestly.

[Gail · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the story of several women, current and past, who have the skill and training from their mothers and grandmothers, to knit Shetland lace. Requiring very small needles and very fine wool, knitting this lace is an art form passed along from generation to generation.

The current women live in Comfort, North Carolina, a small town which seems to be the perfect place for a woman visitor from New York, in a state of indecision about her love life and her future. Unfortunately, things are not always the way they seem, and the New Yorker is instrumental in bringing out the truth, compelling the Comfort residents to face their secrets.

This is a good book for a fast "summer read." I enjoyed it, and found it a bit slow in the beginning, but demanding of my attention once I got into it. I noticed a few cliches and what seemed to me to be less than totally professional writing, and for this reason I gave this book three stars instead of four.