Guest Review: How to Knit a Wild Bikini by Christie Ridgway

The beachside knitting shop Malibu & Ewe is the perfect place for L.A.’s hip young crowd to enjoy colorful yarn and intimate conversation. For personal chef Nikki Carmichael, it could be the softest place to land if her new job falls through. Working for magazine writer Jay Buchanan has come with some strange conditions—like pretending to be his girlfriend. As for Jay, he finds himself drawn to the kitchen, where he’s intrigued by his sexy cook’s ability to withstand the heat between them. And now he thinks it’s time to turn up the flames.

Genre: contemporary romance
Series: Book 1

Isn’t that a great cover? Okay, maybe not, but it’s bright and cheerful and just screams FUN, right? That’s probably why I went into the book thinking it was a comedy…

Nikki Carmichael lost her mother at age 14. It taught her to be independent and not to show weakness. Fifteen years later, she’s built a barrier around her and doesn’t intend to let anyone close… which is easy since all she has is a mechanical fish. The most important thing in her life is her career as a chef which she has to partly give up due to her injured knee. Since she can’t work in restaurants anymore, she hopes to find a position as a private chef… which lands her on Jay Buchanan’s doorstep.

Jay Buchanan is a writer (and owner?) for the most popular men magazine, NYFM, and is thinking of giving up women for a year… not just because he’s had one too many no-string-attached sex gone wrong, but for a series of articles as well. Of course, that’s till Nikki shows up on his doorstep with a batch of her best cookies… and she has to pretend to be his girlfriend in order to chase away an ex.

So yes, I thought this was going to be funny, but I was wrong. It wasn’t. Yes I did chuckle a few times, but it wasn’t anything like Jennifer Crusie or Janet Evanovich where the book is a continuous LOL moment. I think the funniest moment is when I discovered that Fish was a mechanical fish… and the book actually dealt with some serious topics such as rape and artificial insemination.

What did I enjoy? Jay. He was a fun hero, the perpetual playful bachelor. It was interesting to see him interact with Nikki since these two are so different. Also in the beginning, he wasn’t sure whether Nikki was a lesbian or not and that was the perfect set up for some funny conversations. I also liked the atmosphere of the book very much. I could feel the beach ambiance and felt like I was in Malibu…

Nikki wasn’t a bad heroine, but I never warmed up to her. Although her past is not tragic, it’s not a happy one either. After her mother died, Nikki needed comfort… and since her father never provided it, she went looking for it in the wrong arms. She fell for an older boy who pressured her into sex and it resulted into a fight and injured knee. Events in the past have a way to haunt people and Nikki was definitively haunted. At the end, I never got the feeling that she was able to shake her demons off and let people close to her. Yes, she did have the surgery for her knee, but I couldn’t sense any real significant growth. See, the reason why she never got the surgery for her ACL was because she didn’t have anyone close to her to help her out afterwards… nobody to help her to the bathroom after the surgery, nobody to drive her to the physiotherapy sessions, etc. Then, finally, she got the surgery, but the person helping her out wasn’t Jay… and that annoyed me. Jay was willing, he loved her, but she disappeared on him. Then when finally he finds her, she already had the surgery. I was disappointed, because in this book, Jay is the one who changed the most, but he didn’t have the opportunity to show the new him, because she took it away from it. Nikki says that she changed and that the surgery is proof of it, but I don’t feel that way. To me, Nikki was running away from a relationship with Jay and she needed the surgery in order to run farther. Also, she got Cassandra to help with the surgery aftermath, because Cassandra was the lesser of two evils… Otherwise, I don’t think that Nikki would have her get close.

There were many secondary characters and storylines. I thought the one involving his neighbor was superfluous and it should have been eliminate in favor for Nikki and Jay. As for Jay’s younger cousin, Fern, I understand why the author would incorporate her storyline… although it didn’t feel complete. To me, Fern appeared whenever it was convenient to the author and when it wasn’t, she was forgotten. What happened to her at the end? As for the third storyline, Cassandra – owner of Malibu & Ewe, a yarn shop – she was the most interesting and I’m curious about her relationship with Gabe… All those storylines and characters made the book way more busy than necessary and I think it took a bit away from the book.

How to Knit a Wild Bikini was not the beach read I was expecting. It wasn’t bad either, but a tad too busy. I think the author should have focused on the H/H relationship and develop Nikki’s character more instead of the numerous secondary characters and plotlines. However, there is an interesting and refreshing twist that got me all curious to see what’s going to happen next.

My Grade: 3.0/5

This book is available from Berkley. You can buy it here.