Book Review: A Dream of Home

A Dream of Home is Amy Clipston's new Amish novel, and the third in her series "Hearts of the Lancaster Grand Hotel". (See my review of Book #2 in this series: A Mother's Secret.)

This fictional series follows several women of Lancaster County, PA who work at the Lancaster Grand Hotel. Some of the women are Amish, and some are Englishers (non-Amish). The main character of A Dream of Home is an English former Air Force nurse named Madeleine Miller. Madeleine left the Air Force after her fiance Travis died suddenly, and moved to the town of Paradise in Lancaster County to the farm of her late Amish grandparents.

Madeleine's neighbor is a man named Saul Beiler. Saul is known in the community as the widowed father of 11-year old Emma, but in truth, his wife left him and the Amish community when Emma was only 4.Since his wife left, Saul has become distant and won't let anyone close to his heart. When Madeleine and Emma strike up a friendship, Saul realizes his attraction to the woman, but tries to shut her out. Madeleine also feels attracted to Saul, but since he is Amish and she's English, a relationship is forbidden. Can they break down the barriers-both culturally and in their hearts--to find each other?

This novel was a very easy read. It was kind of cute and pretty cheesy, like most other Amish love stories out there. Since I had read the previous book in the series, I felt like I knew many of the characters, which helped, because there were stories of three different families intertwined in this book. I thought A Dream of Home was going to be about Saul and Madeleine (since that's all the back cover talks about), but the stories of Carolyn and Josh, Hannah, Lilly, and Trey, and Ruth were also included. It was a lot of people to keep track of, especially if you're new to the series.

The dialogue was kind of cheesy too, but I wasn't expecting a deep read. It was entertaining, and the cliffhanger at the end of this novel means I'll probably be sucked into reading the next book when it comes out in 2015 =)

*Thank you to Zondervan Publishers and BookLook Bloggers for a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own and have not been influenced in any way.