Review: 4.5 Stars - this story is both heartbreaking and joyful.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 22, 2014
Firstly, I am not a knitter. After reading Amy Lane’s Super Sock Man with her pattern at the end, I was tempted. Then I read The Winter Courtship Rituals of Fur-Bearing Critters. I was smitten.  I devoured each book in the series as it became available and fell in love with the characters as well as the setting.  Set in the Colorado Rockies in the small community of Granby, the stories center around Rance Crawford’s mill where he raises alpacas and rabbits then spins their fur to make gorgeous one of a kind yarn. The warmth and love that is written into these stories is beautiful. There is humor and tender moments as well as personal struggles to overcome.Blackbird Knitting in a Bunny Lair is the sequel to Knitter in His Natural Habitat.  These books need to be read in order to really get to know the characters (although book two, Super Sock Man, does not have the same characters as the others in the Knitting series and even though it is not a prequel to Chase in Shadow (Johnnie’s 1), this is where I first met Chase’s character).At the end of book three, Jeremy has stood up against a mob boss to protect his friend Johnny’s lover from harm.  Jeremy feels he owes Johnny for saving his life years before.  Jeremy had lived a grifter’s life, traveling with his father, pulling con’s until his father was killed and Jeremy himself landed in prison.  After meeting Rance Crawford in book one and being given a chance to become an honest man, life has gradually gotten better.  He has friends that have become family and a boy, Aiden, to call his own.  Now, he is in the hospital with severe injuries and figures he deserved what he got – someone like him has had all the happiness he deserves – and it is time to pay up.  Of course, Aiden does not see it this way and works to reassure Jeremy of his love and worth.What we get in this story is both heartbreaking and joyful. We get to see Jeremy become the man that Aiden and his friends already know him to be and his struggle to believe in himself.  When his friend,Ariadne, finds out that her baby will be born with a birth defect that will require multiple surgeries, Jeremy steps up and sets things in motion to help her and her family out.  It is beautiful watching this evolve and at the same time seeing Jeremy and Aiden’s relationship mature.While the events that put Jeremy in the hospital are told from Stanley’s point of view in Knitter in His Natural Habitat, in this book we get to see it from Jeremy’s and Aiden’s points of view. I really enjoyed this and loved the way their relationship comes full circle and they get the happiness they deserve.  I cried several times while reading Blackbird Knitting in a Bunny Lair, but it was so worth the tears.Originally posted at "Live Your Life, Buy The Book."