Fields of Corn

Fields of Corn by Sarah Price

Paperback, 298 pages

Published April 2nd 2012 by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

ISBN 1470076888

Genre: Christian- Amish Romance
New or Re-read: New
Series? Book 1
Where I heard about it:Randomly found it.
Why I read it: I needed to read something outside my comfort zone for WBC13. Christian Fiction, especially Amish fits the bill.
Setting/Time Frame: Current. Lancaster County, PA.
*****************Spoilers: yes, lots*********

2 STARS


Why am I writing a review for a book I gave 2 stars to? Easy you win some, you lose some. However I have a lot to say about this one and I will feel better once I have it written down.

I don't read Christian Fiction unless its by accident. I have never read an Christian Amish fiction. One of the categories for WBC13 is read outside the box. Meaning read outside of your comfort zone. I find it hard to read outside my comfort zone, since I read so many different genres. So Fields of Corn, a Christian/Amish romance def fit the bill.

I picked this book mostly at random, it was amish and therefore, it would work. It also had a great ratings of 4.52 with 75 ratings on GR and 4.5 with 60 ratings on Amazon.

The basic outline of the story is an "English" girl Shana, moves into a rental on an Amish farm while managing a restaurant in nearby Lancaster. She immediately draws the attention of their son, Emanual Lapp. Who it turns out has not been baptised into the Amish church yet, even though he is 26 years old. He starts courting Shana, although she doesn't realise it at first. However she does have feelings for him and is feeling guilty about it, seeing as he is Amish.
In a burst of passion, they decide to get married, and she will accept the Amish ways, and he says he will accept some "English" ways. He still isn't baptised in the faith, so all is good. She quits her job and sells her car.

They move in together after the wedding, which she doesn't invite any family or friends to. I found this to be a bit odd. She had talked about her family a bit before that, but never said anything bad about them. Just that everyone led busy lives.
Emanual seems to change immediately after the wedding. He makes arrangements for them to attend Amish church every other week. He starts growing the Amish beard, even though he told her he wouldn't. Originally after the marriage he talks about going to visit her family the following summer. However before long he is hating on any "English" ways.
Shana soon finds herself pregnant and wants to bring peace to Emanuals life, so she asks for initiate training into the Amish faith so they can both be baptised and than raise their child in the faith that means so much to her husband.
This is when we find out she hasn't told her family that Emanual is Amish, she did write or phone and let them know she quit her job to get married though.

The communication between her and her husband just seem to disintegrate from there. Which is what bothers me. He claimed to not want to be baptised in the faith prior to meeting Shana. Than he wants to marry her and gets the girl and does a complete change of heart and wants everything to be all Amish all the time. Which, Shana, didn't really agree to. She agreed to live a life similar to that of the Amish, but not to be full blown Amish. She was the one that changed everything in her life around to be with him. Than without discussion, he wants to have the girl and the Amish way of life as well.

When the unfortunate event happens that sees them lose their second pregnancy due to a fire set by some teenage town boys the story completely falls apart in my opinion. This part of the story is rushed and I hate, absolutely hate that the Amish are all ready to turn on her without asking her what happened. (The police want Shana to ID the boys who started the fire.  She refused, but she got accused of helping the police just because they were there. No one ever asked her if she helped them.)

I think this book was just not my cup of tea. It boggles my mind to just think about it. I will def not be picking up another book in this series.