A so-so Amish story -- Minding Molly

Minding Molly is the third of Leslie Gould's The Courtships of Lancaster County series.  As a fan of Shakespeare, Leslie is connecting each of these stories on one of his plays.  This one is based on A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Avid fans of Amish fiction (like me) will find some good elements in Minding Molly.  One of the things I enjoyed was a little different setting for the family farm than most of the other stories I've read.  Their living was made from growing and selling a variety of flowers and other plants, and the author provides a lot of good description of the different plants.  It is always fun in a series to revisit characters from earlier stories, and some old friends showed up in this book.

This was a hard book for me to get through, though, because it seemed to lack depth and flow and just got rather tedious at times.  There was was much more description of characters' conflicts and difficult attitudes than any real movement in the plot.  And some of the resolutions at the end of the story seemed to come rather abruptly and not so naturally.

All in all, this was not a bad story, just not a great one.  And I definitely will give Leslie Gould -- and even future books in this series -- another chance.

Thanks to Bethany House Publishers for providing a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

About the Book

Molly Zook Has Everything Planned Just Right.  Or So She Thinks!

 Molly Zook's always liked being in control, so she's struggling with her mother's wish that, to save the family farm, she marry Mervin Mosier. Especially after Molly meets Leon Fisher. He's from Montana but is now training horses at a nearby ranch. He's tall and muscular and confident--Molly has never met anyone like him and she's sure he feels the same about her.

Determined to let nothing get between them, Molly tries to coax Mervin into falling back in love with Molly's best friend, Hannah. A weekend camping trip in the Poconos could be just the place...but things quickly go awry, and it seems Leon and Hannah might be falling for each other instead! Will Molly keep struggling to control everyone and everything around her? Or will she learn to let God handle the twists and turns of her life?

 About the Author
Leslie Gould is the coauthor, with Mindy Starns Clark, of the #1 CBA bestseller The Amish Midwife, a 2012 Christy Award winner; ECPA bestseller Courting Cate, first in the Courtships of Lancaster County series; and Beyond the Blue, winner of the Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice for Best Inspirational Novel, 2006. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Portland State University and has taught fiction writing at Multnomah University as an adjunct professor. She and her husband and four children live in Portland, Oregon.  Learn more about Leslie at www.lesliegould.com.