A Simply Enchanted Life

To Everything a Season by Lauraine Snelling

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

★: Didn't Like it
★★: It was Ok
★★★: Liked it
★★★★: Really liked it
★★★★★: It was amazing

Suggested Age:14+ Genre:Historical Fiction, Christian Fiction


I really tried to love this book. I did.  This book just wasn’t for me. I felt that it dragged on and on and I just couldn’t connect with the characters.  I have tried to read this for the last twelve weeks and I’ve just decided that I’m not going to make it through.  I felt like the book jumped right into a story without introducing me to the characters. I was completely lost.  This says it is the first in a series but I didn’t know anyone.  I had no connection to anyone and there also wasn’t a glossary of terms so I had no idea what a Tas was.  It wasn’t the only word used but it’s the only one I can recall at this point. I just know I had zero clue of what it was. I’m assuming it’s a family relation but I was—lost.   

I’ve loved other books by this author so after I research this series out to figure out if there’s a better starting point—I’ll probably come back to this at some point.    The cover is gorgeous enough to make me want to revisit when I’ve worked out my confusion.

The River by Beverly Lewis

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


★: Didn't Like it
★★: It was Ok
★★★: Liked it
★★★★: Really liked it
★★★★★: It was amazing

Suggested Age:13+ Genre:Amish Fiction, Christian Fiction
Note: There is one delicately written reference to rape.  However it is so tastefully written that I didn't feel that my daughter couldn't handle reading this book.

 

Child of Mine by David Lewis

My rating: 2 of 5 stars
★: Didn't Like it
★★: It was Ok
★★★: Liked it
★★★★: Really liked it
★★★★★: It was amazing

Suggested Age: 12+
Genre: Christian, Amish Fiction

This is the first Beverly Lewis book that I rated at two stars and it near broke my heart to do it because I really like this author. She’s a sweet lady and is so wonderfully friendly to her fans.

I always promised myself to be honest in my reviews and while this book was well written—I was really upset at the ending. I felt like the entire existence of Laura in the story was pretty much unneeded for how the story ended and I disliked how dishonest Kellly was.

Kelly…sigh…I can’t say too much without completely giving away the storyline but let’s just say—I don’t like her. I don’t like how she mooched off people even if for a good reason, I don’t like how she lied and I sure don’t like how she completely forgot a certain person. I’ll leave it at that. This is simply my opinion and is in no way a downrating of the writing itself. I just couldn’t make myself like how this ended. I do LOVE the picture on the cover, though!

Jack is raising his niece Natalie after the death of her parents some years back. As he travels, Natalie is cared for by her Amish nannie, Laura.

Kelly Maines is looking for her child who was taken from her by her husband and sold illegally on the black market for big bucks. After many years of looking—Kelly thinks that she’s finally found her daughter.

Kelly thinks that Natalie is her daughter and rather than being honest with Jack, she decides to keep her intentions of having Natalie DNA tested to determine if she is her daughter.

She never expected to fall in love with Jack and her tireless search for her daughter may tear apart the budding romance.

In conclusion, I think a lot of people will love this book. I simply couldn’t bond with the characters. Five stars on the writing but I give it a two based on that fact, alone.
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Beverly Marie Jones (Lewis) was born in the heart of Amish country—Lancaster, Pennsylvania. At the tender age of nine, she began writing short stories and poetry.

Beverly's first venture into adult fiction is the best-selling trilogy, The Heritage of Lancaster County, including The Shunning, a suspenseful saga of Katie Lapp, a young Amish woman drawn to the modern world by secrets from her past. The book is loosely based on the author's maternal grandmother, Ada Ranck Buchwalter, who left her Old Order Mennonite upbringing to marry a Bible College student. One Amish-country newspaper claimed Beverly's work to be "a primer on Lancaster County folklore" and offers "an insider's view of Amish life."

A member of the National League of American Pen Women, as well as a Distinguished Alumnus of Evangel University, Lewis has written over 80 books for children, youth, and adults, many of them award-winning. She and her husband, David, with whom this book was written, make their home in Colorado, where they enjoy hiking, biking, and spending time with their family. They are also avid musicians and fiction "book worms."


You can find out more about this author by visiting her website at http://www.beverlylewis.com/
I received this book free from Beverly House Publishers. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own

The Last Bride by Beverly Lewis

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Suggested Age: 14+
Genre: Christian, Amish Fiction

Oh my goodness!!! This book was one of my favorites in the series. My only complaint was that there weren’t quite as many visits with Ella Mae as I like. I just adore that little old lady and I do wish I’d had a few more sips of tea with her this time.

I thought this story was a bit more unique than your humdrum Amish tale. It wasn’t a teen pregnancy story or even a very atypical forbidden romance. Nope, this story had twists and turns and situations that were more than meets the eye. There was depth to the story that is lacking in a lot of Amish fiction. So many other books seem to be the same old story over and over. This one was different.

Tessie Miller is madly in love with Marcus King. Her father has forbidden the union without any explanation whatsoever.

So, Tessie and Marcus elope to the English world and then they return to Hickory Hollow. No one knows of their secret union…

How long can Marcus and Tessie keep this a secret? Then, the unthinkable happens. Tessie finds herself in serious trouble with the church and with her family.

Will she ever find forgiveness or will a simple mistake cost Tessie a lifetime of pain and regret? I have to say, when I read the term, “the unthinkable” in the synopsis? I honestly had very different thoughts about what was going to happen. I was surprised! I mean…I totally wasn’t suspecting what happened to have happened!

I know if you all have read the synopsis that you probably think you’ve got it all figured out but just give the book a chance. Your jaw will drop in that, “dun dun dun” moment and you’ll say, “Wait, what just happened?!”
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Beverly Marie Jones (Lewis) was born in the heart of Amish country—Lancaster, Pennsylvania. At the tender age of nine, she began writing short stories and poetry.

Beverly's first venture into adult fiction is the best-selling trilogy, The Heritage of Lancaster County, including The Shunning, a suspenseful saga of Katie Lapp, a young Amish woman drawn to the modern world by secrets from her past. The book is loosely based on the author's maternal grandmother, Ada Ranck Buchwalter, who left her Old Order Mennonite upbringing to marry a Bible College student. One Amish-country newspaper claimed Beverly's work to be "a primer on Lancaster County folklore" and offers "an insider's view of Amish life."

A member of the National League of American Pen Women, as well as a Distinguished Alumnus of Evangel University, Lewis has written over 80 books for children, youth, and adults, many of them award-winning. She and her husband, David, make their home in Colorado, where they enjoy hiking, biking, and spending time with their family. They are also avid musicians and fiction "book worms."

You can find out more about this author by visiting her website at http://www.beverlylewis.com/
I received this book free from the publisher through Netgalley. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own

Minding Molly by Leslie Gould

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Suggested Age:12+
Genre: Christian,Amish Fiction

I have loved every single book that I’ve read in the The Courtships of Lancaster County series so far!

I have to admit that this one was the one I have been looking forward to the most.

The books in this series are adaptations of Shakespeare plays into an Amish setting and this particular book is a retelling of A Midsummer Night’s Dream—which just happened to be my favorite Shakespeare play.

The cover is also the nicest out of the series so far, I think. The cover model is exactly how I pictured Molly. Fantastic book and I would definitely recommend it!

Molly Zook has lost her father and she is determined to keep her mother from losing their farm. She even considers a marriage of convenience that her mother is determined to arrange. That is, until she meets Leon…

Leon is everything Molly ever wanted. He’s kind and compassionate, good looking and creative. He’s also from Montana and Molly’s heart is torn because she doesn’t want to leave her mother and her sister.

To further complicate things, her friend Marvin has set his eyes on her but Molly doesn’t want to hurt her best friend, Hannah who has her eyes set on Marvin.

When the friends all take a camping trip, Molly’s bossy and take-charge attitude threatens to drive everyone away, including Leon. Will Molly learn to let go and let God be in charge or will her need to control everyone drive them away?

I identified so much with Molly. She has the best intentions and tries to keep things running smoothly by demanding that people do things her way. Her ability to get things done is a good thing but it is awful easy to also come off as bossy and as an elitist who sucks the fun out of everything. Knowing when to turn over control and let people do things their own way is something I also struggle with.

I enjoy reading a book where the characters have flaws and are realistic. I give Leslie Gould two thumbs up and a 5 out of 5 star rating for this book! I look forward to the next book in the installment. Expected publication for “Becoming Bea” is October 2014.
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Leslie Gould is the coauthor, with Mindy Starns Clark, of the #1 CBA bestseller, a 2012 Christy Award winner, The Amish Nanny, and The Amish Bride. She is also the author of numerous other novels, including Garden of Dreams, Beyond the Blue (winner of the Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice for Best Inspirational Novel, 2006), and Scrap Everything. She holds and MFA in creative writing from Portland State University and has taught fiction writing at Multnomah University as an adjunct professor. She and her husband and four children live in Portland, Oregon.

Learn more about Leslie at www.lesliegould.com
I received this book free from Bethany House Publishers in exchange for an honest review. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Untamed Heart, An by Lauraine Snelling

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I’ve really liked other works by this author and I wanted to like this book because the cover is absolutely stunning.

Unfortunately, my expectations really fell short. I've actually put off writing this review because I was hoping that maybe I would come to view it differently.

I’m kind of disappointed in how this one worked out. I just wasn’t expecting to dislike this book so much and I don’t think I’ll read the rest of the series.

The everyday chores and tasks took up so much of the book that I was bored and exhausted just reading it.

I found myself skimming entire chapters simply because I didn’t care who washed the dishes or cooked the food or sheared the sheep at that point.

Then her terrible luck with romance? Sheesh! She went from having no man to being madly in love to having no man to having another man! Oi! I just wasn’t impressed.

Ingeborg is on her family’s seter with her relatives doing a god awful amount of chores—I’ve yet to figure out why all the children are up there doing all of this alone as it wasn’t explained.

Anyway, she happens to meet a handsome and injured traveler during her time there and falls hopelessly in love with him although with all the chores she was doing I really have no idea how there was time! It seems they went from no romance to talking marriage.

Then, after a billion more chores her family returns home and she gets word that her injured traveler has even more misfortune and dies. At this point there was already such a lack of romance that I was groaning but nevertheless the story continues!

Ingborg at that point agrees to marry a widower so that she can be a mother to his son and that’s pretty much the end of the story!

I wish I sounded more optimistic and had more to say but with the lack of a true romance and the fact this book could have been used as a handbook on how to do farm chores, combined with all the phrases and words that I couldn’t even read (and the lack of a glossary of terms) this book just wasn’t a hit for me.

I will read other works by this author but I just don’t think I’ll even worry with this rest of this particular series!

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Award-winning and best selling author Lauraine Snelling began living her dream to be a writer with her first published book for young adult readers, Tragedy on the Toutle, in 1982. She has since continued writing more horse books for young girls, adding historical and contemporary fiction and nonfiction for adults and young readers to her repertoire. All told, she has seventy books published.


Shown in her contemporary romances and women’s fiction, a hallmark of Lauraine’s style is writing about real issues of forgiveness, loss, domestic violence, and cancer within a compelling story. Her work has been translated into Norwegian, Danish, and German, and she has won the Silver Angel Award for An Untamed Land and a Romance Writers of America Golden Heart for Song of Laughter.


As a sought after speaker, Lauraine encourages others to find their gifts and live their lives with humor and joy. Her readers clamor for more books more often, and Lauraine would like to comply ... if only her paintbrushes and easel didn’t call quite so loudly.

Lauraine and her husband, Wayne, have two grown sons, and live in the Tehachapi Mountains with a watchdog Basset named Winston. They love to travel, most especially in their forty-foot motor coach, which they affectionately deem “a work in progress”.

I received this book free from Bethany House Publishers in exchange for an honest review. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

The Miner's Lady by Tracie Peterson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars




I loved this book! I really did!

I enjoyed everything from the beautiful cover to the story.

This author takes the time to really build her characters so that you get to know them and care about their outcome.

I have only read two of three of this series, I’ve not yet had a chance to pick up The Icecutter’s Daughter but these books are standalone stories in the series so it doesn’t really matter which order you pick them up to read!

This book had a Romeo and Juliet twist with Chantel’s younger sister falling for the sworn enemy of the Panetta family. No one really knows why this ridiculous feud still exists but both families are determined to see that it remains intact.

When an accident happens in the mines, Chantel’s father learns a valuable lesson in faith and forgiveness. It’ll take a miracle to get these families on speaking terms though or maybe even a tragedy—it’s sad but oftentimes a tragedy is the only way to get stubborn people to put aside their hate and see the truth.

I loved this book so much that I don’t want to ruin the plot but just know that you’ll get romances for both sisters and while there are bitter moments you’ll still be pleased with the ending. Fantastic! I can’t wait to read more by this author.
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Tracie Peterson is an award-winning, best-selling author of over 95 books. Having given her heart to Jesus at the young age of six, Tracie has always felt called to some form of ministry, and writing fulfills that mission field.

Tracie received her first book contract in November, 1992 and saw A Place To Belong published in February 1993 with Barbour Publishings' Heartsong Presents. She wrote exclusively with Heartsong for the next two years, receiving their readership's vote for Favorite Author of the Year for three years in a row.

In December, 1995 she signed a contract with Bethany House Publishers. Tracie now writes exclusively for Bethany House Publishers. She has co-written with a variety of authors including Judith Pella, Judith Miller, James Scott Bell and her daughter Jennifer.

Learn more about Tracie at http://www.traciepetersonbooks.com/

I received this book free from Bethany House Publishers in exchange for an honest review. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Adoring Addie by Leslie Gould

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Book two in The Courtships of Lancaster County series by Leslie Gould is another wonderful Amish Rendition of a Shakespeare tale!

These books are stand-alone so I wouldn’t worry much about which order to pick them up though I’ll say I really enjoyed this book more than Courting Cate.

Both books were really good but this one was simply my favorite of the two. The characters were enjoyable and easy to relate to.

Addie Cramer’s parents are set on her marrying Phillip Eicher and are furious when she begins to show an interest in Jonathan Mosier. I have to admit that Phillip drove me nuts. He was annoying and just irritated me. This of course was the desired emotion the author obviously wished to invoke.

The Cramer’s disdain for Jonathan stems from a decades old feud between the Mosier and the Cramer Family. Their hatred clouds their mind and skews their ideas about Jonathan, who actually is a really stand up kind of guy and a great Christian to boot!

The real reason for the feud is discovered by Addie and it’s a very tricky situation to deal with. This leads to a good bit of soul searching and thought on Addie’s part on how to best deal with and diffuse the feud—bringing peace and healing to both families.

This book deals with situations of alcoholism and depression that will really make you connect with these characters. They seem so lifelike!
I’ve read a good bit of skepticism about how one can retell such a tragic story such as Romeo and Juliet in a lighthearted Amish tale but the author captured the tale perfectly!

I am very eager to pick up the entire series. Most retellings are typical and annoying. These are a bit unique as they’re in an Amish setting and they’re much more lighthearted than secular tales.
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Leslie Gould is the coauthor, with Mindy Starns Clark, of the #1 CBA bestseller, a 2012 Christy Award winner, The Amish Nanny, and The Amish Bride. She is also the author of numerous other novels, including Garden of Dreams, Beyond the Blue (winner of the Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice for Best Inspirational Novel, 2006), and Scrap Everything. She holds and MFA in creative writing from Portland State University and has taught fiction writing at Multnomah University as an adjunct professor. She and her husband and four children live in Portland, Oregon.

Learn more about Leslie at www.lesliegould.com
I received this book free from Bethany House Publishers in exchange for an honest review. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.