Katie's Song

Title: KATIE’S SONG

Author: Jennifer Beckstrand

Publisher: Summerside Press

May 2012

ISBN: 978-1609366391

Genre: Amish

Kate Weaver returns home to her family's farm in Apple Lake, Wisconsin, battered and bruised and carrying a secret. She is not yet baptized and has spent the past year at a music conservatory in Milwaukee, living among the English. Music is Kat's passion, and she is very good, so she faces a difficult choice: she must either give up her family and home to pursue her talents or come home and be baptized and give up on her dreams.

And with Nathaniel King, the handsome neighbor boy she grew up with, paying attention to her,the choice of whether to return to school in the fall is even harder.

Kate wins a starring role in an upcoming opera, and as she wrestles with pressure from her family and her new found feelings for Nathaniel, she is also haunted by what happened to her just before she left school: she fought to protect her friend against an angry ex and landed the man in intensive care. Will the consequences of that battle be the end of everything she's ever wanted? Will Nathaniel wait around while she tries to figure out God's plan for her life?

KATIE’S SONG is Ms. Beckstrand’s debut novel. Part of a three-book stand-alone series, Forever After in Apple Lake, fans of KATIE’S SONG will want to read Rebecca’s Rose and Miriam’s Quilt, books two and three in the series.

I can’t say I was overly impressed. The story was well-written, but I never really connected with the characters and I hated the way just kept jumping to conclusions. Katie had left the Amish to go to singing school, but she returns home after she beat up a wife beater…and finds that the boy she hated as a child is now a man. I have to admit, I loved the humor. Parts made me laugh. Parts made me sad.

If you like Amish fiction, you should give KATIE’S SONG a try. She’s not at the same level as others I could name (but won’t) but she is a fresh new voice in the industry—and she has a different twist to the same old tales. Don’t let him be dead… Now, that’s a opening hook! I’m giving it 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.  $12.99. 314 pages.