Customer Reviews

Dark Road Home (Maplecreek Amish Trilogy #1)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book had me from the very first page. I had trouble putting it down and read it in 2 days. I thought it was very well written and found the references to the Amish very interesting. I highly recommend this book.

A great story! Mystery, romance and adventure--in a quiet Amish community? Yes! Yes!

A lady lawyer leaves the big city seeking safety from a stalker for herself and her young niece. They come to Maplecreek to operate a friend's quilt shop. The peaceful community is disrupted when four young Amish are killed by a mysterious hit and run driver. The lawyer-in-hiding feels compelled to find the killer of her young friends.

Meanwhile an uneasy relationship is building between the worldly lawyer and a 'plain' man who has returned from life outside to commit himself to the Amish ways.

The author pieces together her story like a fine Amish quilt and keeps the reader guessing until the end. The characters are very well developed and believable and I look forward to reading more from Ms Harper

Karen Harper seldom disappoints and this book was no exception. The story was interesting and the Amish connection was informative as well. Daniel and Brooke seemed like a "real" couple and Daniel's torment about his "Amishness" was realistically portrayed. I look forward to reading EMPTY CRADLE, which is waiting on my shelf.

MY, what a wonderful book! First time I had read any of Karen Harper's novels. I could NOT put it down, it is so gripping. So glad that I had purchased all 3 of the series at one time. Although, it was complete and didn't leave you hanging till the next book. I am now looking for more of Karen's Amish novels. Thank you so much for the wonderful book, keep up the wonderful writing. GOD BLESS.

Review posted here: [...]

Today we are back to Amish fiction!

The review is of

Dark Road Home by Karen Harper

Dark Road Home is the first book in Karen Harper's Maplecreek Amish series.

Let me start off by saying how much I loved the book!

Dark Road Home is the story of a young attorney, Brooke, who has fled from the city of Columbus, Ohio due to having a stalker. After she worked on a high profile criminal defense case in which she got her client off, her client immediately committed another heinous crime causing Brooke to come under great scrutiny by the community. As a result she got tons of hate mail, but the worst was the stalker who broke into her home, took things from her house and made her feel entirely unsafe.

As the guardian for her young niece, Jeniffer, whose mother died and whose father abandoned her, Brooke felt it vital to get Jeniffer away from Columbus and the stalker who could possibly pose a physical danger to herself and her young niece.

So, Brooke moves to Maplecreek, Ohio where she helps to run an Amish quilting shop while the owner is on vacation. She slowly makes friends with the surrounding Amish neighbors and late one night she gets a knock on her door. Four young Amish people have come to visit her, including her darling neighbor, Katie, and the young man she is courting. Brooke is happy to have their company and they enjoy a pleasant evening with ice cream and laughter.

Yet another knock disturbs the evening and this time it is Katie's uncle, Daniel, who has just returned from having left the Amish. Katie is thrilled to see he uncle, and after a few minutes of catching up, Daniel hurries the 2 young Amish couples off home to meet their midnight curfew.

Daniel heads back home as well and as Brooke is preparing to climb into bed after a long evening she hears a terrifying crunch and crash of metal. When she rushes outside and down the road she finds the buggy Katie and her 3 friends had been traveling in, smashed to pieces having been hit by a car. However, there is no car in sight. Daniel has already arrived at the scene and everyone but Katie is dead. They rush to get Katie to the hospital, but tragically she does not survive the surgeries due to the extensive nature of her injuries.

The Amish community is thrown into tragedy at the loss of the 4 young people, and Brooke feels that it is her duty to try to find out who was driving the car so that they can be properly charged with murder and the hit-and-run.

That's when mysterious things begin to happen to Brooke. It is clear that someone does not want her investigating the death. That, or her Columbus stalker has tracked her down...

With the help of Daniel she refuses to give up trying to find out who caused this tragedy. Things get more complicated as she finds out about a mysterious land purchase by outsiders, she continues to get threatening messages sent to her, and she finds that someone has begun to enter her new home in Maplecreek.

Who is stalking Brooke, and is it the same person from Columbus? Or does someone really oppose her investigation of the murders of the young Amish couples?

Read Dark Road Home to find out!

I really enjoyed this book! I love a good mystery (or two) thrown into an Amish book. I could not at all predict the outcome, and that is always a good thing. Usually mysteries, especially Amish mysteries, seem to have twists that are easily predictable and you know who the responsible party or parties are before the end of the book. Not so with Dark Road Home!

If you want something a little bit different from the normal Amish romance, try Dark Road Home, I don't think you'll regret it!

5 out of 5 stars!

Pretty bad novel about attorney Brooke Benton (yuck!) who flees the big city (she's being stalked by a maniac who's mad she got a killer off) and moves to Amish country. Not long after she's there, a big truck runs into a buggy full of Amish teens and then flees the scene. The teens all die and Brooke takes over the investigation. All the while, she's swooning over Daniel, a studly Amish guy, and crying a lot. Pretty badly written, not that entertaining, and a little bit patronizing about the Amish, but it takes a lot more than that to get me to put down a book once I've started it. Maybe it's a pride thing. I honestly can't explain why I bothered reading past page 35.

A far, far better mystery involving the Amish community is Jodi Picoult's "Plain Truth." Head on over there and buy that one instead!