I rarely read Amish romance, but every now and again I'll pick one up. I grew up not far from a Mennonite community and I knew people there, so that wI rarely read Amish romance, but every now and again I'll pick one up. I grew up not far from a Mennonite community and I knew people there, so that world does intrigue me. However, knowing some of the stuff the tourists don't see makes it hard for me to understand why someone would almost fetishize it the way some readers seem to.
I read Patricia Davids a couple times for AAR reviews, and I do tend to like her writing. From the author's note in this book, I understand that she lives on the farm in Kansas where she grew up, and she is familiar with the Amish community there. That may in part explain the tone of her writing. She seems to approach her stories as someone with curiosity and respect for her neighbors, rather than idealizing their world.
In this story, we meet Laura Beth Yoder, an Amish widow whose husband died of brain cancer. She is trying to make a go of it on their small farm, where she lives with her younger sister. Given the dearth of eligible young men in her area, she has reluctantly settled on a plan to sell the farm and move close to cousins in Ohio, in the hopes of remarrying and possibly having a family of her own.
Into the midst of this, she finds herself offering refuge to stranded travelers in a storm. Joshua King, himself a widower, is an ex-Amish man with a difficult past. His car was swept away in flood waters, but Laura Beth rescues him and his infant son, Caleb, from the waters. While Joshua is staying with Laura Beth and her sister, he finds himself not only drawn to his kind hostess, but also thinking hard about what is important to him and where he is going in life.
On the one hand, Ms. Davids does tell a warm and often sweet story. However, the romance developed painfully slowly and sometimes felt lost in the pages of farming description and angst over Joshua's past. Most of the romance seemed to consist of lookers-on seeing the leads together and thinking, "Hmm...there's something between Laura Beth and Joshua," though I have to admit that I never felt the chemistry there.
I did like the characters and the various plotlines involving life in Cedar Grove, but since the leads just seemed to go in circles without really coming to life on the page, this ended up being a fairly "meh" read for me. This was my last read of 2024, so hopefully 2025 starts off in more promising fashion....more
I’m very open to trying new authors, so I generally have quite a few books in the TBR from new-to-me writers. This month, I tried several and ended upI’m very open to trying new authors, so I generally have quite a few books in the TBR from new-to-me writers. This month, I tried several and ended up DNF-ing them. For whatever reason, nothing was really grabbing me. As the due date on this column approached, I grabbed a romantic suspense novel from the pile and told myself that I would stick with it no matter what. Marta Perry’s Home By Dark ended up being a mixed bag. Her development of the setting and background was definitely a cut above some of what I’ve read, but the story was a bit too slow-moving for me.
I’m not sure I’d call this mystery an Amish romance, but it’s definitely Amish-adjacent. The book is set in Pennsylvania Amish Country, where the author is from, and like the her, many of the characters have Pennsylvania Dutch roots. I tend to be wary of Amish books, but I did like the setting in this one. It’s not set in an insular bubble but rather spends a lot of time dealing with the intersections between the Amish and the majority culture around them. Most of the leading characters in this book are not Amish, and we see a lot of scenes devoted to showing how the two groups interact with one another. This was actually one of the more interesting parts of the book for me as a reader.
This novel is a romance, but it’s more heroine-centric than some. The lead, Rachel Mason, grew up Amish but left to marry her teenage sweetheart, with whom she moved to Philadelphia. Rachel’s first husband has died and she has returned to her hometown with her nine-year-old daughter. Her mother-in-law left Rachel her home and Rachel plans to turn the large Victorian home into a bed and breakfast.
The opening chapters of the book show Rachel being quite frank about her limited options in life due to the Amish way of only educating children through eighth grade. The author also shows the difficulties Rachel faces in coming back. She and her daughter live modern, twenty-first century lives and the reception that Rachel receives from friends and family is quite varied. She left before her baptism, so the church didn’t shun her, but some of Rachel’s family, particularly her father, are quite uncomfortable around her. Many Amish romances seem to romanticize Amish life, so this author’s view of things, which appeared more balanced, was interesting to me as a reader.