Things I did not know before taking on the Unapologetic Romance Readers challenge for 2017:1) Christmas/holiday romances are pretty much all shorter than the typical romance novel.
2) Motorcycle romances basically all involve treating women terribly.
3) Amish romances are a thing!
Temptation was recommended for this category by a group member because it was cheap on Kindle. And while price doesn't necessarily tell quality in Kindle books, sometimes it does...
The story here is about Rose, a non-Amish aka "English" girl who moves to a rural area with her father and brothers after her mother dies from cancer. They are welcomed by the neighboring Amish family, and Rose instantly falls in love with their son Noah and he with her. Oh, instalove. But of course, their lifestyles are in the way of their twue whuv! #drama That is literally the entire plot to this book.
Noah has a Madonna/whore complex about Rose that really rubbed me the wrong way here. He likes her because she is vibrant and different and nothing like the girls of his acquaintance--but also resents when she wears pants or makeup or talks to boys that aren't him, which are perfectly normal things for a sixteen-year-old girl to do, and Noah knows that it's normal for her and resents her for it anyway. This is not the foundation of a healthy relationship. Neither is Noah expecting Rose to drop her entire lifestyle and walk away from her family when he is not willing to make any concessions for her, because it's "just better" if they stay in the Amish community. And Rose's willingness to go along with this really made me want to slap her upside the head. You know how in The Little Mermaid movie, Ariel protests that she's fifteen and can do what she wants because she is an #adult, and you kind of want to smack her because No you are not you are fifteen! Yeah, that's exactly what this was like for me.
This is a series, and I cannot possibly imagine how I could put up with this drama for two more books plus another that focuses on a different main character. Yikes. I mean, given the "climactic" events for this book, I'm very wary of Hopkins jumping the shark even moreso in the other books. Additionally, the writing is just average and Hopkins very much does not have a good editor or clear grasp of grammar as it relates to dialogue, at all, which sometimes made it difficult to tell who was talking, when conversations began and ended, etc. Additionally, as I mentioned before, there's no complexity at all to the characters or the plot, which actually made this a pretty bland read.
Overall, not something I think I'll be continuing.
1.5 stars out of 5.
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