I think I might be in the minority here, but I just wasn't impressed with this book by Amy Clipston. I like Amish fiction, and while there were plenty of good elements to this book, there were just some I couldn't get past.
Katie is unsure of where her life is headed. Her friends Lindsay and Lizzie Anne's have boyfriends and betrothals and she's starting to feel left out of things as they plan their futures. Because Katie has no beau, she just works in the bakery and while she enjoys it, she knows she wants more too. So when handsome Mennonite Jake starts doing carpentry at the bakery, she knows she shouldn't be attracted to him, but she is. Unfortunately her father doesn't like her newfound attraction and punishes her severely. She and Jake can never be together, but she wants to badly.
Katie, while the main character of this story, is kind of a bystander. She meekly stands by and lets things happen and while I know it is not the Amish way to dissent, it just seemed that she wasn't very firm in any of her beliefs, which is not the Amish way. I actually enjoyed her friends personalities more because they knew what they wanted and they worked on ways to make it happen. And Katie's father, he was more than just a little unreal and I just couldn't quite believe in his change of emotions. They changed too swiftly to be believable. Jake was a good character and I did enjoy reading about him. He at least was decisive and probably would make up for Katie.
The plot was fairly simplistic, almost a Romeo and Juliet of the Amish world. And I did like it, and thought that the way Katie's friend's stories were woven in was done just right. I also liked the use of the Amish German dialect and thought it came across ok, not too hard to understand or keep up with. Really it was just the characters and their sudden changes in beliefs that I really had trouble with in this book. And that was enough to really distract me from liking it above average. Things have to be believable. The pace was ok, it drug out a little bit in the beginning and then really started racing towards the end. A more moderate pacing might not have gone amiss. And because this is Amish fiction there is a lot of Christian elements to the book; not a bad thing for some, but it was definitely noticeable here.
An ok Amish book. Not the best out there but surely not the worst either. I would read another book by Amy Clipston.
A Season of Love
Copyright 2012
300 pages
No comments:
Post a Comment