Almost Amish by Kathryn Cushman

While the name of this book would make you think that this just another fiction book about the Amish, this is not the case. This book is about a modern family that goes off to the country to live like the Amish as part of a reality TV show. The main character, Julie, is a stay-at-home mom whose life is full of meetings and constant stress. In fact, she hates her life. When the opportunity comes along to help her sister-in-law further her career by going on a reality TV show about what it would be like for a modern family to start living like the Amish, she jumps at the change of pace.

Julie embraces the lifestyle and enjoys the simplicity of their lives even though everything is more difficult without modern conveniences, she feels everything actually has a purpose being done. Susan, Julie's sister-in-law, goes on the show hoping to further her career in having a TV show and a line of hospitality products including cookbooks. She needs everything on this show to be perfect and constantly stresses about everything being done just right. While Julie and the kids seem to be enjoying and thriving from the change of pace, Susan seems to be more uptight than ever.

I found these characters to be pretty relatable. Although for the majority of the book, I could care less about Susan as she didn't seem like a very nice person. There really aren't that many twists and turns in the book, but it is a nice book to take a break from everything for awhile.

I would recommend this book if you are just wanting to read an enjoyable story with relatable characters. If you are looking for an Amish fiction book, you may want to pass on this one - though it does give more of a realistic view of what it might be like to be Amish.

I received this book for free from Bethany House publishers in exchange for an honest review. I was under no obligation to give it a positive review. All the thoughts are my own.

The Hidden Life: An Amish Quilt Novel by Adina Senft

I've read a fair amount of Amish books in my lifetime and this ranks up there with some of the better ones I've read. From the moment I opened the book and started reading, I couldn't put it down - well I had to, but I didn't want to. Emma Stoltzfus just felt so real to me and was a character that I could relate to and I found myself wondering what else was going to happen to her.

This story is the 2nd book in the Amish Quilt Novels though it isn't stated as the 2nd book. I did read the first book, but I don't think that someone who hadn't read that one would find it hard to read this one without the background.

The story of Emma Stoltzfus is one of an "old maid" - well at least I'm guessing in the world of the Amish. She is only 30, but she has never been courted and stays home watching her elderly mother. In her spare time, she loves to write and sends off many recipes and various pieces to the Amish periodicals. The book opens with her sending off a book to a national contest for fiction. She isn't sure how things will turn out, but ends up doing quite well and ranks 7th out of thousands of manuscripts.

Shortly after that, she gets an offer from a literary agent to sell her book. She heads to New York City out of curiosity and to avoid some drama at home and then comes back to her Amish life. For 12 years, she hasn't had any prospects for marriage and in just the space of a few weeks, she has 3 different Amish men interested in her but her heart belongs to only one of them.

I really enjoyed this story and couldn't wait for the ending, but I found the ending to be very abrupt. I'm hoping that more of her story is told in the next book because otherwise I'll be very disappointed. Other than the abrupt ending, this book was so enjoyable. While it isn't full of mystery there was enough of wondering "what will happen next?" to keep me reading until the last page.

I would highly recommend this to anyone that likes to read Amish fiction.

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review through Faith Words a division of Hachette Book Group. I was under no obligation to give this a positive review. All thoughts in this blog are my own. 

Submerged by Dani Pettrey

This book was excellent. I love suspenseful books and this book did not disappoint. I generally don't like reading Christian Suspense books because they just usually aren't that suspenseful to me and seem to be easy to figure out, but this book kept me reading and captivated. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. 

Summary:

Bailey Craig heads back to a small Alaskan town to say her final goodbyes to an aunt that was killed in a plane crash. She never expected to go back to the town that had made her life miserable during a rough time in her life, but she cares more about her aunt and realizes she needs to pay her respects. While she is trying to go through her aunt's belongings to settle her estate, she gets involved in solving her aunt's murder. 

While solving the murder using her knowledge of Russian history, she gets to know Cole McKenna again and falls in love with him all over again. She longs for a relationship with him, but isn't sure if he can forgive her past. 

While I did enjoy reading this book, I did find that at times the main character got really caught up on the fact that nobody could forgive her for what she had done and that even though she realized that God had forgiven her that people wouldn't be able to. It just seemed at times to detract from the story. I still loved this book and couldn't wait to read her next book in this series (hopefully you'll be seeing my review of that book in the next few weeks). 

I received this free book from Bethany House in exchange for an honest review. The opinions on this blog are my own and I was under no obligation to give a positive review. 

Reunion by Lauraine Snelling

Coming soon in July...

Reunion by Lauraine Snelling!

Summary of the book:

The Sorenson Family are planning a family reunion even though their mother Dagmar has just passed away from cancer and will not be there to join them. Dagmar's daughter Keira has been going through her mother's house with the help of her best friend (and brother's wife) Leah. Keira is searching for her birth certificate so she can get her passport for a trip to Norway that her husband surprised her with and Leah is looking for pictures to make a family memory book for all that will be attending the reunion.

When Keira stumbles upon her birth certificate, she is shocked to discover that under the "father" section it reads: "Unknown." Hoping that she is reading this wrong and not wanting to devastate her brother Marcus (Leah's husband), she keeps the information to herself until she can look into the matter more.

Meanwhile, Marcus (a pastor in the community) discovers that his teenage daughter is pregnant and tries to decide what to do about it: should he hide the information or resign from the ministry?

While plans for the reunion continue to take place, each member of the family seems to have a secret that they are keeping from the other members of the family and it will all come to a head at the reunion!

My review:

This book gave great insight into how devastating a teen pregnancy can be. There are many great thoughts throughout the book on what should or could be done with a Biblical view of life. I felt that this book did very well at detailing how it affected each person whether it was Kirstin (the girl who was pregnant), Jose (the father of the baby), Leah (her mom), Marcus (her dad) or Keira (her aunt). The book definitely kept the focus on what God's Word says about life even though it was not easy for any of them when "push came to shove".

This book does a fantastic job of showing how important unconditional love is in the believer's life. By showing unconditional love in your life, you get to emulate God's love for us as sinners! What a great picture!

I did enjoy this book even though it focused on some hard topics. The author did a good job of weaving the story so that you really did get involved in the characters lives and wanted them to do the right thing. I know there will be many people that find this book controversial, but for those that try to live according to the Bible I would think this book would only be encouraging!

I received this book for free from Faith Words in exchange for an honest review. I was under no obligation to give it a positive review.