Review of:  A Perfect Amish Romance

Shelley Shepard Gray

Gallery Books, $16.00 (320p) ISBN 978-1-9821-4839-3

From the author of the beloved Walnut Creek novels comes the first in the “The Berlin Bookmobile” series featuring Sarah Anne, a 60-something widow who accepts a part-time position delivering library books to the Amish community [pp. 1-6 ff]. Sarah Anne tries to live up to her own expectations of the “perfect” librarian and keeps a journal of her activities and interactions to learn from [p. 5 ff]. As she forms personal relationships with the readers she serves, she becomes a trusted and compassionate confidante [p. 17 ff]. However, Sarah Anne has difficulty treating herself with the same grace [p. 19]. Through sharing her love of books and hearing people’s own stories she learns to let go of rigid standards and embraces the opportunity to give and receive kindness and mercy [p. 292-294]. Readers will be delighted with Sarah Anne’s gentle matchmaking between Aaron, a young Old Order Amish man secretly seeking to obtain his GED, and Kayla, a New Order woman in her 20’s who agrees to tutor Aaron as she mourns her mother’s early passing and father’s descent into depression [p. 16]. The romance between Aaron’s younger sister, Tiny, and her childhood friend, Joel, is similarly fraught with themes of perfectionism and hidden struggles which subtly run throughout the work [p. 57 ff]. Gray’s characters feel like intimate friends who deal with loss and longing and are shaped by transformative powers of love, hope, and faith. A set of discussion questions is included as an appendix. Book clubs will find this work a treat and readers will eagerly await future installments in this imaginative and tenderly written series.  [Jan]