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I have read other books by this author but don't know if any are in this series or not.

I liked Rachel's journey overall: from wanting the boy who liked her sister instead, to holding out hope that he might like her once her sister left the Amish faith, to giving up her hope, to realizing she needed to turn to God, and then God giving her what she had long hoped for.

There's a lesson in Anna thinking things are greener on the other side of the fence. For a while, I wasn't sure if she married Reuben because she loved him or because she wanted to get away from the restrictions of Amish life. She did find that some of the things she'd thought she'd look forward to weren't as exciting as she'd thought or what she'd thought them to be. I was glad to see that Anna and Reuben seemed to have come to an agreement by the end of the book. He'd started going to church with her and seemed to be spending time with her again--for a while in the middle of the book I really did wonder if they were going to end up split up.

I didn't like many of the ways that journey came about.

Rachel seemed a bit bitter that Silas liked Anna and not her at some points in the story.

Rachel seemed selfish in not wanting to help her family in the ways they needed her to help. She would prefer to be walking somewhere looking at birds or daydreaming--nonproductive things. Don't get me wrong, I think all of us have times we want to do things like that, but I'd have felt better about her choices if she'd wanted to do a different job on the farm or even fishing since that might bring back food for her family if nothing else. I can understand not really liking the greenhouse though.

Rachel's supposed to be almost 19 and doesn't like being thought of as a child but to be honest, many of her actions seemed childish to me. She eavesdrops a lot. She likes Silas until she thinks she overhears him tell another Amish man that he still likes Anna--then she decides that she can't like him and won't even give him the chance to talk to her--even though by that point he is starting to like Rachel for herself and not be dwelling on what he could have had with Anna.

Instead of talking to each other, Rachel and Silas both just assume things. Rachel assumes Silas can't forget Anna and that Anna will always be first in his heart. Silas doesn't tell Rachel he's struggling and needs to spend time in prayer. Rachel doesn't tell Silas that Abe asked her out and she refused.

Anna learned valuable lessons in her journey but in ways I wish she hadn't had to learn them. ( )