Her Heart's Desire by Shlley Shepard Gray

Back Cover: Mary Margaret Miller needs an escape from her small Amish community. She boards a bus, all alone, for a vacation in Pinecraft, Florida. Meeting Betsy and Lilly on the way, she's amazed to find two kindred spirits. They become fast friends and determine to have the best two weeks of their lives. For Mary, it starts when she meets Jayson Raber, a handsome and charming carpenter.

Jayson is taken with Mary from the get-go, but he has responsibilities back home in Kentucky--including a girl he's supposed to marry. And when someone from Mary's past shows up in Pinecraft, it seems like her perfect vacation is ruined. But that's nothing compared to what's coming when she realizes what Jayson has been hiding . . .

Review: "Her Heart's Desire" is the first Amish book I've picked up in about 10 years. Honestly, the glut of these types of books onto the market when they first became popular seriously fried me on this sub genre. However, when I saw the cover for this book and read the description my interest was piqued enough to break my 'no Amish books' rule and order it. 

I really, really wanted to like this book. I was hoping that 'Her Heart's Desire' would, in a way, be a redemption story for me and induct me into the Amish fandom. I'm afraid that didn't happen. 

Positives: I really liked how sweet the women in this story were. They were lovely, honorable girls that honoured the 'home-spun' Amish traditions. I also appreciated how chaste their relationships with their male interests were and can honestly say that this book was squeaky clean. 

Cons: This book was painfully predictable. By chapter two you know how the rest of the book is going to pan out and all the plot twists were included on the back cover; I really felt like I didn't need to finish the book. Also, the big 'trauma' that the girls were running from was so cliche and humoursly small that it made it very hard for me to take the book seriously from the start. Overall, I struggled to read this book and found it very hard to finish. 

For who I'd recommend this book for... I'd say this is a book you could had a young teen just breaking into romance reads for a really clean story.

This book was provided by Graf Martin Communications and Baker Publishing House in exchange for my honest review.