The Amish are a particularly devout offshoot of American Christians, mostly the descendants of German-speaking Swiss colonists. Their interpretation of the Bible tends to favor a pretty heavy adherence to humility and simplicity. As a result, they intentionally limit their daily life technology. They primarily work in farming communities, living in homes without electricity, and using horse buggies as their primary mode of transport.
They’re also famous for adhering to a pretty strict old-fashioned dress code and are stereotyped for being fanatically hard workers in manual labor. This is rather extreme and hard to relate to the lifestyle. They tend to be ridiculed when depicted in American pop culture. This description only applies to what’s known as the Old Amish. There are dozens of other offshoots of the Amish faith who lead radically different lives.
Unlike most Americans, the Amish are bilingual as their first language is a dialect known as Pennsylvania Dutch, which is a bit weird considering it’s a form of German. It has nothing to do with the Dutch of the Netherlands. The name came about over time because people kept mispronouncing Deitsch, the German word for German.
7 Amish Romance Novels
Amish people have very specific theological standards. The reason why they live that way is that they believe that their faith is intrinsically tied to the way that they live. So that’s why it’s so desperate for them. Amish romance or bonnet rippers as they are humorously nicknamed is a massively successful sub-genre was something akin to outright confusion exacerbated no end.
The Amish romance subgenre is entirely created by and for non-Amish evangelical Christians who want to read about a romance that’s exotic to them but still 100% Christian and American. So it doesn’t challenge their beliefs in any way, and apparently, the Amish fill that niche. If you love Amish romance, you will like my review. I will review 7 Amish romance novels for you. Let’s go!
1. The Shunning (The Heritage of Lancaster County)
This book is about a twenty-one-year-old girl named Katie, a member of the Amish community. She is married to a 40-year-old widower who has five children. She’s already a bit of a spinster, and if she turns down the bishop, there’ll be no one left for her to marry. But she’s conflicted because her previous love, Daniel, has died. So the entire theme and tension throughout the book are that Katie doesn’t feel at home in the Amish community.
Katie wants to sing music that isn’t allowed by the church. Only the church allows music to be sung in hymns, and she wants to play the guitar. So she doesn’t understand why she feels so different. Then it turns out that she was adopted secretly in a super sketchy way that isn’t legal, and it’s technically considered human trafficking. So it ends with her running away from her marriage to the bishop and being shunned by her community.
Author: Beverly Lewis
Average Customer Review: (4.7 out of 5, on Amazon)
Number Of Pages: 290
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle | Audio CD
2. The Stone Wall
The story is about a girl named Anna. She’s in her early 20s, and she’s gone through a breakup and has difficulty knowing where her place is in life. So she’s struggling with that. Also, she’s among the Beachy Amish. They broke away from the old order Amish in 1927, and they allow modern conveniences, which is interesting to read a book about an honest young lady.
Things are very simple for Anna, but Anna needs a change in her life, and she ends up working. She contacts her mother’s cousin, who lives in Lancaster County in Strasburg. There’s a job opening for her at a local tourism place. They needed people to come and give people custom tours, which was pretty cool. But the best thing about this book is the girls at the tour guide. As readers, we learn so much about the area from visiting these places and the people going along with her.
This book also describes the story of Anna’s grandmother, Eliza. When Eliza was a young girl, she was in Strasburg, taking care of an elderly aunt she didn’t want to be. Their parents sent her to be there, and she falls in love with an old Amish man. Now Eliza is Amish like Anna, but she falls in love with him. They know that they can’t express their love in front of people, so they have a stone wall in between.
Also, there’s a special stone where they hide special notes from each other in. The story goes in and out, and it comes back with Anna, and then it goes back with Eliza. You will see how the Amish community affects two pure love and makes the stone wall.
Author: Beverly Lewis
Average Customer Review: (4.8 out of 5, on Amazon)
Number Of Pages: 353
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle
3. A Love Undone
This book is about an Amish woman named Jolene Keim who has a tough life. She independently has to raise all of her siblings herself. She’s the oldest sister in the family, so you can imagine it. She ends up being an Amish model, which means an older woman who is not married. But she’s an interesting character.
Jolene has a gift of being an artist, which isn’t allowed in her Amish community. So there are some issues there. But she sometimes sneaks away to a secret place and does some painting because she loves it so much. Also, Jolene innocently falls in love with a married man, which may sound odd. Among some Amish districts that she falls in love with is Andy Fisher. He lives three hours away in his Amish community comes there to help with some abused animals to help them through a difficult time.
Andy meets Jolene there, and they have a relationship. Jolene thinks that Andy is a trace widower. That’s what was communicated to her. It was a rush conversation. Somebody coughed at the wrong time, and she heard Tracy widower, which to her meant a widower whose wife had died. So, Andy is not allowed to divorce or remarry in the Amish community. He has to deal with that because he falls in love with Jolene. She doesn’t know that he has that status, so she always knows they have this connection.
Author: Cindy Woodsmall
Average Customer Review: (4.7 out of 5, on Amazon)
Number Of Pages: 338
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle | Audio CD
4. Under the Harvest Moon (Amish Harvest)
It is a story largely about recovering from domestic violence. A young Amish woman named Naomi finds herself abruptly free of her abusive husband when he dies in a horse and carriage accident, leaving her with two young daughters and four months pregnant. At least in this book, it’s Amish custom to remarry after a bereavement immediately. But Naomi is too traumatized from the beatings she received from her last husband ever truly loved again.
That is until her father hires a long-time friend (Brock) to help with her harvest. Naomi and Brock hit it off, and her kids instantly adore him. They go to a carnival and have a pleasant game night, and in the end, Brock decides to become Amish to get married.
I was impressed with this particular book because it shows a good understanding of the nonsexual fantasies of single moms. Throughout most of the story, she’s plagued with the ridiculous notion that she somehow made an otherwise good man violent by being a sub-par wife. Brock making Naomi realize that she’s not to blame is good.
Author: Beth Wiseman
Average Customer Review: (4.0 out of 5, on Amazon)
Number Of Pages: 145
Available: Kindle
5. Love and Buggy Rides
This book is about an Amish girl named Janie. She witnesses a teenage driver texting on his phone crash into the back of an Amish buggy, injuring several people. The reckless car driver blames the carriage’s driver, Jonathan, for the accident and tries to sue him. Janie is forbidden to give her account of the incident to the police by her father.
Her father claims that the Amish custom never gets involved in legal matters. But she falls in love with Jonathan, so she disobeys her dad to get him off the hook. When Janie first sees Jonathan, she’s immediately breath taken because “She’d never seen eyes that reminded her of the honey that she buys at the farmer’s market before.”
Author: Amy Clipston
Average Customer Review: (4.7 out of 5, on Amazon)
Number Of Pages: 120
Available: Kindle
6. A Quiet Love
An Amish antisocial introverted poetry fanatic with a very bad speech impediment named Dinah. She is sent to her aunt’s farm for a week to stay with her new husband and his autistic son Amos. Just before she arrives, her Uncle badly injures himself with a scythe. He can’t finish harvesting the fields, so it’s up to her and Amos to get the job done.
Dinah finds Amos’s earnest attitude and lack of judgment make her stutter so relaxing. She finds she can talk to him without her speech impediment when it’s the two of them. They start to develop feelings for each other. Then she quickly becomes frustrated at how his family patronizes him to the point of treating him like a child most of the time.
They eventually decide to get married, which completely shocks his family. They’re concerned that he might not be able to make an informed decision. But they get married anyway, the end. It would acknowledge that an Amish lifestyle isn’t ideal for someone who requires special needs education.
Author: Kathleen Fuller
Average Customer Review: (4.2 out of 5, on Amazon)
Number Of Pages: 114
Available: Kindle
7. Mischief in the Autumn Air
This is the only story in the book in which the plot is more important than the romance. Martha, a bookkeeper at an Amish auction house, and her boss Eli get suspicious when a young man overbids on pieces of furniture that were all made by a specific gentleman. They investigate and discover sections of a map caved into the undersides, along with hints and clues and references to a treasure.
His father knew about this map because he used to work with the guy who was selling the furniture. They discovered the complete map together carved onto a wardrobe. It came with some weird hint saying, You’ll find the true treasure of our town if you follow this map. But the other guy didn’t want to follow it, so they had this big falling out. Also, he ended up obsessing about his whole life and tasked his son with solving the mystery on his deathbed.
Meanwhile, the other guy decided to split the map up and carve it onto eight other pieces of furniture for reasons. All three teams follow the clues and find the treasure. That’s the important bit. The hunt leads them all around their town and forces them to re-learn its rich history, and eventually, they find the treasure. The true treasure was the Amish romance we found along the way” sort of message as Martha and Eli are totes in love.
Author: Vannetta Chapman
Average Customer Review: (4.3 out of 5, on Amazon)
Number Of Pages: 108
Available: Kindle
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