Knot Again is a sweet, smart contemporary romance about how true love can find you when you least expect it. Communication problems make this one a little hard to recommend without mild reservations but it’s still worth a read.

Lucas Strong is a fireman searching for a little bit of tranquility. He posed for the FDNY’s annual beefcake calendar in an attempt at promoting his family’s knitting store, Strong Knits, but now realizes that was a huge mistake, because it’s made him the most eligible bachelor in the city. To attain a sense of peace, he starts knitting in the solace of a twenty-four-hour laundromat near his apartment building.

One day a curious young girl approaches him, wanting to learn more about the process of knitting. He and the kid, Remi, hit it off, and he quickly learns that he knows her mother – Sydney Harris-Hughes – whom he crushed on hard in their school days.

For a while, Sydney was doing well in Washington DC as a glamorous wife. Unfortunately, her marriage fell apart due to her seemingly-perfect husband’s philandering and she’s moved home to Harlem to help take care of Scrubs, her grandpa’s laundromat and to otherwise help him out.

Both Sydney and Lucas are soaked in regret – Lucas wished he’d had the nerve to ask Sydney out earlier (he’s always believed he’s not good enough for her) and he’s grappling with his guilt over the deaths of his moms and is also in the middle of reforming his relationship with his brothers. Sydney has some obvious issues with her own mom – a bit of a pushy social climber – and the gossip surrounding her divorce, and is learning how to be independent. Can they overcome their misgivings and find love?

There are some plusses and minuses to the spell Jackson weaves here. Lucas Strong is one of the most swoonworthy heroes of the year, and I enjoyed his conflicted nature and introversion very much. Sydney, too, is extremely likable and watching her battle for her own sense of self-worth is a treat. It’s understandable that she’d want more time to figure out how to be single – that part of their slow coming together, I understood. But they spend too much time beating themselves up over the past, and that really bogs the narrative down in the early chapters. They need to just talk, and the big discussions feel as though they aren’t lingered over for as long as I’d have liked them to be.

But on the plus side, the strong atmosphere of the book is perfectly New York – specifically of Harlem. Everything feels lived-in and real. That’s the most beautiful pat of Knot Again. Even with the flow of the novel standing in their way sometimes, Sydney and Lucas get their chance at a second true love – and doesn’t everyone deserve that much?

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