Book Review: Knitting in the City Book 1

Neanderthal Seeks Human by Penny Reid
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

DNF at 15%. Not cute, not endearing. I had to skim reviews to see if it was just me, but no, the problems with this book seem to be ubiquitous. She's super "smart" right? I mean, she has all these random trivia facts memorized and she has an elitist defense of her luddite tendencies! She's the stereotypical book smart but not street smart, right? Let's do this trope as aggressively as possible!

But here's where it gets frustrating. In the VERY LITTLE that I actually got through before giving up, I'm disgusted by her absolutist world view with absolutely no life experience to support it. Her philosophy of 4 different kinds of people (which actually she asserts is only two types of people - good and bad) is narrow, reductionist, and doesn't stand up to any minimal scrutiny. Her hatred of cell phones is similarly black and white - the things she hates about cell phones are easy to avoid (social media, zombie-staring at a screen) while still owning a phone. It's like she actively ignores any evidence in her daily life that doesn't support her reductionist view, and if presented with any evidence that her world view is wrong, she descends into a panic attack and can't integrate it.

This leads to the next major issue with this character - she's completely oblivious to, well, everything, and apparently that's the entire basis of the rest of the book? And again, this is completely willful on her part. She can't accept new evidence and adjust her beliefs; if something doesn't conform to what she believes to be true, she just summarily ignores it. Sorry no, I can't deal with that for 400 pages. Get a reality check lady, pay attention to your surroundings, gets some ADD meds, SOMETHING! Aggressively quirky is one thing, completely lacking in situational awareness and denying flat out truths people straightforwardly tell you in order to make your life more difficult than it needs to be is quite another thing.

Super disappointed. I was totally here for a series that heavily features yarn, by an author that is largely positively reviewed. But seriously, ugh.

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