Review
While this genre was definitely a new experience for me, it reminded me a lot of my mother's old teenage books about young women in the first half of the 20th century: religious lives in remote villages, houses without electricity, household chores filling up most of the day.
It felt like a warm bath of donkey milk, even though donkeys were about the only farm animals that weren't mentioned in the book. I loved reading it before going to bed, because of the simplistic coziness that Amish life apparently has to offer. Fantasizing about making my own quilt and going to sleep under it during a harsh winter.
I'm not a very religious person, so those aspects didn't really appeal that much to me, yet I have to say I DID feel morally virtuous while reading it. Lord knows (no pun intended)!
Now as for the story in itself, 300 pages of waiting for a secret to be revealed and then it turns out to be something meh. Like, come on, I was expecting a bloodsucking goat cult-something, but maybe that says more about what I'm generally reading about than anything else. Either way, the ending sucked. Big time. You focus the entire story on this thing and then at first, you get a dull explanation, followed by...the Acknowledgements. Wait, WHAT?! It's a thrilogy?! With the biggest mystery being of equal excitement as my dog's farts?!
I really hoped to give this one at least 3 stars, because:
1. The previously mentioned feeling of coziness
2. The writing style, which was very catchy and kept me going even though nothing happened
3. The abundancy of food references: I think pretty much 98% of the total number of pages has some sort of homemade delicacy involved, which just made me go YUM! Eating chocolate waffles under my homemade quilt!
Sadly, the ending, but also the last quarter of the book where I ALMOST started skimming my way through to some actiony bits, made me unable to give it more than an 'OK'. Still, if you like reading about the Amish lifestyle or want something in which absolutely nothing happens, so you can read it before going to bed, this is the book for you.
EDIT 7/7/2014:
I realised I was being too harsh last night on the part of 'nothing happens'. Even though it wasn't very eventful, stuff did happen and I noticed this morning that I was wondering where the Heather-storyline would take us in the next book. And who Grace is going to end up with. So who knows, maybe I'm going to read part 2 some day when I'm out of other books to read.
It felt like a warm bath of donkey milk, even though donkeys were about the only farm animals that weren't mentioned in the book. I loved reading it before going to bed, because of the simplistic coziness that Amish life apparently has to offer. Fantasizing about making my own quilt and going to sleep under it during a harsh winter.
I'm not a very religious person, so those aspects didn't really appeal that much to me, yet I have to say I DID feel morally virtuous while reading it. Lord knows (no pun intended)!
Now as for the story in itself, 300 pages of waiting for a secret to be revealed and then it turns out to be something meh. Like, come on, I was expecting a bloodsucking goat cult-something, but maybe that says more about what I'm generally reading about than anything else. Either way, the ending sucked. Big time. You focus the entire story on this thing and then at first, you get a dull explanation, followed by...the Acknowledgements. Wait, WHAT?! It's a thrilogy?! With the biggest mystery being of equal excitement as my dog's farts?!
I really hoped to give this one at least 3 stars, because:
1. The previously mentioned feeling of coziness
2. The writing style, which was very catchy and kept me going even though nothing happened
3. The abundancy of food references: I think pretty much 98% of the total number of pages has some sort of homemade delicacy involved, which just made me go YUM! Eating chocolate waffles under my homemade quilt!
Sadly, the ending, but also the last quarter of the book where I ALMOST started skimming my way through to some actiony bits, made me unable to give it more than an 'OK'. Still, if you like reading about the Amish lifestyle or want something in which absolutely nothing happens, so you can read it before going to bed, this is the book for you.
EDIT 7/7/2014:
I realised I was being too harsh last night on the part of 'nothing happens'. Even though it wasn't very eventful, stuff did happen and I noticed this morning that I was wondering where the Heather-storyline would take us in the next book. And who Grace is going to end up with. So who knows, maybe I'm going to read part 2 some day when I'm out of other books to read.
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