Operation Bonnet

Title: OPERATION BONNET
Author: Kimberly Stuart
Publisher: David C. Cook
February 2011
ISBN: 878-0-7814-4891-8
Genre: Inspirational/women’s fiction

Nellie Monroe lives with her eighty-something year old grandmother, and despite the fact that her parents are rich, she works at a golf course, with a boss that can’t talk without yelling. She dreams of being a private investigator, but there is little to no action in her small Ohio town, and she’d have to relocate to Cleveland. Which would mean leaving her grandmother.

Nellie’s big break comes when her boss hires an ex-Amish man, Amos Shelter, to build a miniature golf course. Amos hires Nellie to check up on his girl back home to see if she’s seeing Amos’ nemesis. Nellie manages to “break into” the Amish culture by stealing her professor’s cooking classes and taking lessons herself, just so she can get a foot in.

But will Nellie be able to find out what is going on with Amos’ girl? Does she have what it takes to be a private investigator? Will she be able to master the perfect pie crust?

OPERATION BONNET is being marketed as “Not your grandmother’s Amish fiction.” This kind of confused me at first, taking it literal, my grandmother didn’t read Amish fiction… but as I read OPERATION BONNET, I understood the reasoning. If you are looking for a sweet romance or a cozy mystery involving the Plain folk, or even a woman’s fiction about a girl struggling to find herself in Amish country, then OPERATION BONNET is not for you. This book is about a totally modern woman, smart, savvy and snarky, who’s willing to break every one of the ten commandments to get what she wants.

OPERATION BONNET does start out a bit slow. I think that the author moved the prologue to the first chapter, as it seemed to start with backstory. But once it got past the fifth-grader with afro hair and started getting into the real story it got interesting and I laughed out loud several times. The ending of the story was an unexpected twist. I thoroughly enjoyed reading OPERATION BONNET and especially enjoyed the Afterwards section at the back of the book. $14.99. 266 pages.