An Amish Family: Four Stories by Kathleen Fuller {Book Review}

An Amish Family is one of the newest collections of novellas by Kathleen Fuller. While Amish fiction isn’t my favorite, I’ve grown to enjoy certain authors of the genre. I couldn’t remember having read any by Kathleen Fuller, so I was curious to see if I would enjoy her take on this unique culture.

The links on this blog and in the posts may be affiliate links. Please see my disclosure policy for full details and thank you for your support!

About the Book

An Amish Family contains four short novellas which each stand independent: Building Trust, A Heart Full of Love (also in An Amish Cradle), Surprised by Love, and A Gift for Anne Marie (also in An Amish Second Christmas). As I noted, two of these
novellas have appeared in other compilations of Amish novellas. Fortunately, I hadn’t read either of them yet, although I discovered I WAS familiar with the characters in A Heart Full of Love, so I believe I’ve read about them in another novella somewhere. Each of these stories has a main problem relating to family. One book has a couple ready to get married, when the bride's father tells her she can marry anyone except who she has chosen. The second story explores the strained relationship between a new mother (who happens to have been recently blinded) of twins and her own mother. The third story explores a situation when a daughter goes to great lengths to foil the matchmaking of her mother. The fourth story explores the relationship between a daughter and mother--when the mother announces she's getting remarried and wants the family to move to a new state!

My Thoughts on the Book

All in all, this collection of novellas is full of sweet stories. Unlike some of my favorite Amish authors though, I found these to be pretty cookie cutter Amish fiction in their plot and characters, with the exception of A Heart Full of Love which included a handicapped lead character. They were short and quick to read. Not very meaty at all in regards to topic or issues. Of course they ARE novellas, and you don’t have a lot of time to build any stories, but I have read some novellas with much more “meat” than these had.

If you are looking for an easy to read, heartwarming Amish story then I would recommend this book. If you want something with more meat, or less “traditional” Amish fiction, I’d suggest maybe a different author, or at least maybe a full length book rather than some novellas--like her Amish Letters series). Because I have a very high rating system because of the shear number of books I read and what I expect, I give this one 3.5 stars. It was good, but just not a standout.

An Amish Family: Four Stories

by Kathleen Fuller

Available on Amazon in Paperback and Kindle

*****