Neanderthal Seeks Human: A Smart Romance (Knitting in the City, #1)

by Penny Reid

• ISBN10: 1960342096
• ISBN13: 9781960342096
• Publish Date: 13 March 2013
• Publish Status: Active
• Imprint: Cipher-Naught
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 296
• Language: English

Reviews

[Sam@WLABB]

Rating: 4.5 Stars

This is Penny Reid doing what Penny Reid does well. She creates sweet, endearing romances that are filled with whip-smart characters that are hilarious. For the love of Thor! How could you not fall in love with both Quinn and Janie? Janie is so odd and quirky, but so smart and honest. Her awkwardness is what makes her so special and unique, and she won the heart of Quinn - Sir McHotPants, who makes her proclaim such phrases as "It was as if a unicorn had appeared beneath a double rainbow and started tap dancing." It takes a special guy to make a woman say things like that. And Janie is able to help Quinn get in touch with his inner good guy and inner geek. He goes from being a guy who "doesn't date" to a man who tells a woman: "If I were a function, you would be my asymptote. I always tend toward you." Yeah, I sighed. In fact, I had so many swoony moments reading this book and I laughed out loud quite frequently. I mean, that night that Quinn crashes knitting club -- hysterical! In a nutshell: smart, funny, schmexy, awesome read.

[nitzan_schwarz]

I really enjoyed this one!!!! Had a lot of fun with the characters and interactions and GOD Janie was hilarious.

[bumblingbookworm]

Original Review at The Bumbling Bookworm

Rating: 4 Stars

I bought this one on a whim one day when I needed something new to read; I think it might've been featured in iTunes. Well, let me tell you I'm glad I stumbled across this gem!

Janie is going through a rough time - her boyfriend cheated on her, he kicked her out of his apartment, and also got her fired from her job. Sounds like a real winner, huh! Luckily she's able to crash with a friend, but in the midst of all this humiliation is Quinn witnessing it all. He starts showing up all the time and slowly but surely worms his way into Janie's life. The rest, as they say, is history!

Janie is hilarious, I was literally laughing aloud when reading this - awkward, since I was on a train and I looked like a crazy person... She's down on her luck but she's surrounded with the greatest friends and a guy that won't stay away. She was a bit clueless though, and that did grate on me a little bit in certain moments. I quickly worked out the twist involving Quinn, as I'm sure most readers would, and I just wanted to shake her at times and say "get there quicker!" I wasn't sure if she was wilfully misunderstanding Quinn at times or if she was actually that ditzy, or blonde for lack of a better word. I can identify with that though - I'm naturally a brunette but I was varying shades of blonde for the longest time and my friends would say that it was my natural hair colour coming through, not the brown... And one of them was actually blonde... Let's just say I have a habit of saying silly things or not catching on very quickly :)

The romance with Quinn was HOT. It was so well written; thankfully it wasn't insta-love (yuck!), which can be found far to often in this genre. Quinn was smart, sexy and a modern-day knight in shining armour for Janie. Janie says it best:

If we were in Victorian England I would have called him dashing; but, since we lived in the 21st century I would have to settle for the wordier GQ model hot.

While this is a romance, this book didn't just focus on the romance between Janie and Quinn; there were some solid friendships too. Janie is a member of a knitting club, hence the series being called Knitting in the City, and those girls would do anything for her and each other. Seriously, when the shit hits the fan, they are RIGHT THERE for Janie! Case in point:

“He didn’t save us ; haven’t you been listening?” Elizabeth held an icepack to her chin where she’d been hit by an meaty elbow . “Fiona stabbed one of them with a Susan Bates needle, Marie was wielding a tequila bottle, Sandra pistol-whipped the other, and I shot the third.”

“Where were Janie and Kat?” Ashley looked from me to Kat.

“Hiding behind the couch like sane people!” Kat said before anyone else could speak.

The strong female friendship is a unique quality, as I find it's rare to read a book which such solid friendships between a group of women, especially in romance novels. Sometimes romances can be so focused on just that, the romance, and they kind of forget to allow the protaganist to have a life outside the romance. Thankfully, this book does not fall into this trap. Also, it has made me want to take up knitting again! I know, how cool am I!?

This book is smart, witty, and laugh out loud funny! I'm so glad to have discovered Penny Reid, and I hope you all take the time to discover her also. It's definitely worth a read, now I just have to get the others in the series :)