Review: Not Amish at all
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 12 7, 2013
An Amish story doesn't just have Pennsylvania Dutch words tossed in, or refer to travel in buggies. To be an Amish story, the characters need to be distinctly different from non-English characters, and this is where this author fails. Remove the occasional 'gut' or 'mamm', and these stories could easily be placed in any 'English' setting. For example, an Amish story about school bullying? The characters don't seem to see their problems from a uniquely Amish perspective. And in some stories, there's just not much there. The author tells us, rather than showing us, that characters have arrived at a change of heart. In some stories, the action mostly takes place offstage- sometimes, in dreams rather than in reality. The poor writing was not quite bad enough to get me to return the book- what made me take that step was the marketing the stories as Amish. I believe this was a deliberate choice to deceive potential customers.