The Shunning

The Shunning
Beverly Lewis
282 pages
Publisher: Bethany House
Source: Books-A-Million
★★★★☆

You can read the Goodreads summary here.

You know Amish novels are my guilty pleasure and this was one of the best Beverly Lewis novels I've read.  I wanted to read it soon because Hallmark made a movie from the novel that's premiering on April 16th and I wanted to have read the book before seeing the movie.

Katie Lapp has struggled with her Amish heritage for as long as she can remember, often wanting to just indulge in a simple song.  After her beau dies tragically, she struggles even more despite the fact that she's engaged to the bishop in her town.  The bishop!  It's a big deal.  Life gets even more complicated when she finds a fancy baby gown in her parents' attic, too fancy to be from an Amish child.  Soon she must come to terms with her past and figure out what to do with her future.

The novel was a very good and quick read, I read it in an afternoon.  Things really got interesting about halfway through and I just plowed through the end.  I can't wait to see what Hallmark does with the story in their movie.

Of course, the whole thing ended with a cliffhanger and thus the potential for Katie, who suffered with herself so much in this novel, to find happiness.  I was hoping just this once I could get away with reading just the first book in a series, but no, now I have to get the second book, The Confession.