One of my daughters has adored the Life With Lily books and asked me to find more Amish fiction for her. She then loved Amish Christmas and School's Out. I thought I'd share my list of grown-up Amish fiction with all of you.
Showing posts with label Amish fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amish fiction. Show all posts
Friday, August 8, 2025
Thursday, January 6, 2022
Adult Christian Fiction with Teenage Main Characters
I have been a bookworm my whole life but I have not always read Christian books. I didn't really enjoy YA (young adult) novels as a teen so I read maybe ten of them during my teenage years, otherwise adult books.
I wish I hadn't read most of what I read back then but alas, I did. If I could go back, if love to recommend these adult novels to my teenage self! These are all clean Christian fiction novels featuring teenage main characters.
The Alliance... I've talked about this Amish apocalyptic story, set immediately after an EMP, a few times. This one is edgier than most Christian fiction as there is violence (people in the outside world want to take out the Amish community or their resources) and non-graphic talk about a person who used to use and sell drugs. There's also non-graphic about people fearing someone may have been sexually assaulted. I found this story (and it's sequel, The Divide) quite compelling. This one is told from the perspective of a 19-year-old young woman in the Amish community (with lots of emphasis on her 15-year-old brother she's a guardian for) and the Englisher (non-Amish) young man who happens upon her community at the start of the EMP so it will be of interest to teen boys and girls alike.
Dear Mr Knightley... My bet is that our main protagonist, Samantha, is about 19 years old, maybe 20. She's given a scholarship to a prestigious journalism program but the caveat is she must write progress letters to her anonymous benefactor, whom she calls Mr Knightley. She tells him everything and things get a little crazy! This is an epistolary novel, told all in letters, and it's a retelling of classic novel Daddy Long Legs.
Even Now... This Karen Kingsbury novel is the exact kind of dramatic teen pregnancy cautionary tale I loved in middle school. In this one our heroine, who is around 17 or 18, has been raised by her grandparents. She discovers her mother's old journals, from she was a pregnant teen in the 80s, and uses the clues found there to search for her estranged parents. The sequel, Ever After, is about the daughter's relationship with her new boyfriend and something that will be a spoiler to the first one. I liked both.
The Key to Everything... This one will also work well for teen boys. Set in the 1940s, out 15-year-old male protagonist sets off on a bike ride down the coast of Florida, both in remembrance of his recently deceased father who once took the same bike ride and in search of the girl he's fallen for. All the main characters in this one are very sweet and almost flawless. I like the sweet mother-son relationship.
The Moonlight School... This one is set in 1911 Appalachia. Our primary protagonist is 20ish-year-old Lucy, sent to stay with her aunt Cora and help bring literacy to the hills of Appalachia. I also enjoyed the perspective of teenage Angie, who is sweet on a boy who's sweet on this young new teacher. Atmospheric and fun.
The Nature of Small Birds... This book was really interesting, at least from a writer's perspective, because it's essentially a story about Mindy that's told in alternating timelines and from her family's perspectives... But we never actually hear from Mindy herself! The 1988 storyline is from Mindy's sister during their teenage years. Mindy was adopted from Saigon, Vietnam in the 1975 Babylift. As an adult she's going back to meet her birth mother and it brings lots of things to the surface.
No Ocean Too Wide... This is a story about the McAllister children who are separated when their mother takes ill. This based-on-true-events book is set in the early 1900s and is about the children's attempt to reunite the family despite seemingly impossible circumstances.
The Shunning... Katie is kind of a rebel Amish girl, always stretching a toe over the line and wishing for things she knows aren't suited for Amish women. She crosses the line and is subject to a shunning, but also unearths a family secret and goes to great lengths to track it down. I don't normally love Amish fiction or Beverly Lewis' writing style but I still liked this enough to finish the series!
Whose Waves These Are... This timeslip, set in sleepy Maine, is one of my favorites. There's a contemporary anthropologist heroine unraveling the story of an old man's young adult past, which we get to see from his own perspective just after WWII. This is a novel about grief, unconventional families, forgiveness, courage... Love it so much!
Also on my radar: Children of the Stars // The Choice // A Long Time Comin' // Set the Stars Alight // Stars of Alabama // Under the Magnolias // Under the Tulip Tree // When Stars Rain Down
Tuesday, August 17, 2021
Christian fiction told from multiple points of view
Maybe it's the Enneagram 9 in me but I just love a story told from multiple points of view! Here are ten Christian fiction books/series that tell you a story from two or more perspectives.
Happy reading!
The Alliance... Trigger warnings for this one, an edgier apocalyptic story told from the viewpoints of Amish Leora and Englisher Moses. This one isn't for everyone but I enjoyed it and its sequel, The Divide.
The Baxter Family series... I adore this series (which starts with Redemption) about the whole Baxter Family! This one dives headfirst into tough topics and won't shy away from making you sob!
The Haunting at Bonaventure Circus*... This mysterious Wisconsin-based timeslip is about a serial killer, a young woman connected to the circus in 1928, and a modern day single mother who is battling an autoimmune disease while dealing with the new (and possibly haunted?!) property she just purchased. We're getting the first half of the mystery from our 1920s character's perspective and the second half from our modern character's perspective. Good stuff!
Hidden Among the Stars... I adored this WWII time slip! Mystery, scandal, bookshop, books, finding confidence, hope and triumph in the face of tragedy... I still think of this one often! Half of the story is told from our WWII heroine's perspective and the other half is from our modern day protagonist who is piecing together the story. I love time slips!
The Love Letter... This is the story of an actress and a screenwriter trying to tell the story behind a Revolutionary War-time love letter with very little information under their belts! Romantic stories are never my favorites but I did like this one (she's a great writer) and it did indeed help this time period come alive for me!
More Than We Remember*... I really liked this one! The story is about three women and the way their lives are intertwining through a drunk driving accident. The characters felt very real and the engaging story felt a lot like a Kristin Hannah book.
The Nature of Small Birds*... What I really like about this book is that it's essentially a story about Money's adoption (and other big life events) told from the perspective of everyone but Mindy! She was adopted through the Vietnam Babylift in 1975 and we see her story playing out through her mom's eyes in 1975, her big sister's eyes in 1988, and her father's eyes in 2013.
Roots of Wood and Stone*... I absolutely adored this romantic time slip, especially the rich family history thread, and would recommend it to any timeslip fan. Sloane shows us her search for her birth family and her budding feelings for a new guy while we explore historic family journals with them... Delightful!
The Time Keeper... This one is all about Father Time, a teenage girl, a dying old man, and their exploration of the concepts of time + the meaning of life! I was deeply moved by this one.
Though I Stumble... Kim Cash Tate did such a great job here! We've got women from different walks of life working through different things, all brought together through the common bond of a Christian women's retreat. I couldn't help but root for all of them!
The Wedding Dress... Think The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, but with a wedding dress instead of blue jeans! Set in Alabama, this delightful time slip novel follows three different women with different bodies for whom this wedding dress fit perfectly with no alterations. They each have very different life circumstances and the dress seems to find each of them... The audio version was wonderful!
When Twilight Breaks*... This delightful WWII Christian fiction, sent to me by Revel in exchange for an honest review, was my first time reading a Sarah Sundin novel. I loved it! This is a straight historical fiction and despite my infatuation with time slips here lately I adored being in Peter and Evelyn's story the whole time. Peter and Evelyn are both Americans in Germany and Evelyn is there as a foreign correspondent. I was a journalism major in college and never found that idea appealing but if I'd read this book at the time I might have had a different opinion! Evelyn is a strong, independent woman and Peter is respectful and enchanted by these traits so this book will likely be a great fit for readers who like heroines fitting that bill.
*I received a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
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