A Season of Love

A Season of Love (Kauffman Amish Bakery Series) 

by Amy Clipston  (Author)

published by Zondervan

June 24, 2012

ISBN: 978-0310319979

Three young friends enter the most important season of their lives. But relationships have changed, and only time will tell if Lindsay, Katie, and Lizzie Anne have made the right choices.

Three young women are about to change their lives: Lizzie Anne and Samuel have decided to get married, and Lindsay is about to be baptized into the Amish faith and is being courted by Matthew. While Katie Kauffman is happy for her friends who seem to have settled their futures, she is also finding herself something of a fifth wheel.

When Lindsay’s sister Jessica returns to Bird-in-Hand, she finds that Jake Miller has moved on with his life. He lost hope that Jessica would ever be satisfied to settle in rural Pennsylvania and takes comfort in becoming close friends with Katie. However, it’s not an easy road as Jake is Mennonite and Katie has just been baptized. Her father forbids them to see each other, adamant that his daughter marry an Amish man.

Take a trip to Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania, where you’ll meet the delightful women of the Kauffman Amish Bakery in Lancaster County. As each woman’s story unfolds, you will share in her joys, dreams . . . and secrets. You’ll discover the simplicity of the Amish lifestyle and, most importantly, you will be encouraged by the hope and faith of these women, and the importance they place on their families.

A SEASON OF HOPE was loaned to me by a friend since she is a huge fan of Amy Clipston and I have only read and liked a few of her novellas and one of her young adult books. My friend says this is Ms. Clipston’s best book. We both are fans of Amish fiction, so I asked to borrow my friend’s book.

I am no judge on whether or not this is her best book, but I wasn’t impressed with it. The characters were flat, and the reader was held at a distance. I couldn’t connect with them, even though I wanted to. Plus, they had the same conversation multiple times, even in the same chapter. Repetition is good in some things such as learning the multiplication table, not so good in others, such as getting lost in a book.

The story is clean, with nothing a conservative reader would find shocking, and I do like the way it is centered around a bakery in Lancaster County and everyone even remotely connected to it.  Fans of Ms. Clipston might find this “her best book ” as my friend did. Fans of Amish fiction and series related to one family (bakery) saga might like it.

3 stars. 302 pages. Available in ebook, paperback, hardcover, audio, and audio CD.