Kelly Irvin has authored the
third book in The New Hope Amish
series, A Plain Love Song (Harvest
House Publishers), and it shines brightly in the Amish genre.The leading lady in A Plain Love Song is 18-year-old Adah who is not your typical Amish
girl from New Hope, Missouri.Adah lives
to make music and yearns to be a song writer.She constantly hears music in her head and is scribbling down lyrics to
the match the notes she hears.Adah is
able to listen to English music at the homes she cleans, but not at her Amish
home where English music is forbidden.
Due to Adah’s overwhelming
desire to make music, she has been shying away from Amish baptism which would
require her to give up her iPod and the freedoms she enjoys during Rumspringa.Unsettling to Adah, her special friend
Matthew is taking his baptism classes and wants to get serious; he is ready to
settle down and get married.Adah has
one foot in the Amish world and one foot in the English world, she can’t seem
to decide what she wants.Her inability
to decide to take her baptism vows upsets Matthew and her parents.Matthew wonders if he is a fool to pursue
Adah when she won’t return his “I love you.”
While at one of her cleaning
jobs, Adah meets an English boy, Jackson, who loves music as much as she
does.Jackson falls for Adah and knows
the way to her heart is through their shared love of music.He shows her how to play the guitar, they
sing duets together, and he writes songs just for her.Adah could not be more torn between her
attraction to Jackson and her strong and comfortable feelings for Matthew.
Jackson convinces Adah to
leave New Hope and run away to Branson, Missouri, to begin a singing career with
him.Adah feels that Matthew has given
up on her since she has not yet taken her baptismal vows.She knows that she is disappointing her
parents and family but feels this is her chance to follow her dreams to make
music.The book explores with several
characters how far should one go to follow a dream.
Adah figures out what is
important and necessary in her life and decides to pursue those goals.She rediscovers the importance of her
relationship with God and placing God first in her life.Kelly Irvin has written a first rate Amish
novel with a unique and more modern type of protagonist.Kelly provides a fascinating romantic
triangle and sweetly works out the problems that Adah faces. A Plain
Love Song reads perfectly as a stand-alone book within The New Hope Amish series, but readers will also want to read the
first two books in the series to further their journey with Kelly Irvin’s
skilled writing.The book released July 1, 2014.
Gloria is a 59-year-old retired RN and former
accountant who has
a life long love of reading. She has spent the
last two years reading every
Amish novel she can get her hands on. When not
reading, Gloria spends her day trading stocks and options,
tweeting under the name of @gloriason, and
expressing her gratitude to God. She blogs at amishreader.blogspot.com.