A Log Cabin Christmas

A Log Cabin Christmas by Margaret Brownley, Wanda E. Brunstetter, Kelly Eileen Hake, Liz Johnson, Jane Kirkpatrick, Liz Tolsma, Michelle Ule, Debra Ullrich and Erica Vetsch

GENRE: HISTORICAL ROMANCE

PUBLISHER: BARBOUR PUBLISHING

PUBLICATION DATE: SEPTEMBER 1, 2011

RATING: 8 OUT OF 10 STARS

PROS: Introduces readers to established authors and newcomers to the genre; perfect length of stories to read during the busy holiday season

CONS: Not ideal to read one story immediately after the other as the log cabin setting can get a bit repetitive

This endearing collection from Barbour follows on from the success of the previous year’s A Prairie Christmas Collection. Compiling short stories from popular and established authors in the historical genre as well as several newcomers, A Log Cabin Christmas features nine stories set in log cabins at varying locations and periods of American history. Ranging from typical homes built out of logs to log schools and stores and even a log church, the authors of A Log Cabin Christmas show readers how romance can blossom in every setting. Characters dream of living in log cabins, build homes from scratch and learn to overcome difficulties in this shared setting, across different locations and time periods at Christmastime in historical America.

As it is impossible to share my in-depth thoughts on all the stories in this collection I’ve picked out my ultimate favourites to share. While I didn’t have one outright favourite story in this collection, there were several that really stood out to me.

The Courting Quilt by Jane Kirkpatrick was one of these purely because it featured the most unique protagonists in the entire collection. Mary’s hair is prematurely white and as a result everyone believes her to be an elderly woman, and Richard was just as unusual with his different coloured eyes. This was more than just a straight-forward romance, featuring some humour in the fact that nearly all of the women in the story fell for Richard without him realising it. This was not a story that I forgot in a hurry and I’ll definitely be looking out for more from this author, who already has several novels under her belt.

A Log Cabin Christmas also introduced me to a newer, less-established author who I’m certain will soon become more popular in the inspirational market: Liz Tolsma. I adored Under His Wings, the story of a young woman, Adie, who lives with her father at a logging camp and finds herself having to rely on one of the other loggers for protection when her father is killed in an accident. This was a slow moving romance as Adie took a while to respond to Noah’s offers of help. This touching tale will appeal to fans of marriage of convenience stories.

My love of all things German may have biased me towards A Grand Country Christmas by Debra Ullrick, but even those who aren’t so familiar with the language and the customs will enjoy this sweet tale of orphaned Awnya being taken in by Amadeus and his family just in time for Christmas. I thoroughly enjoyed this story, especially as the protagonists had a lot of chemistry between them which made their quickly blossoming relationship seem all the more realistic. The sizzle in their romance reminded me a bit of Vickie McDonough or Mary Connealy and made a much appreciated addition to this otherwise incredibly chaste collection. Readers who appreciate stories featuring characters from other ethnicities will likely also appreciate the Mexican-infused The Dogrot Christmas by Michelle Ule which, despite having a very different type of romance from that in A Grand Country Christmas, reminded in my mind long after I finished reading it.

I must also mention Margaret Brownley’s short story, which is the first in this collection. I was introduced to her work earlier this year and was pleased to discover that I enjoyed her shorter works just as much as her full-length novels. Snow Angels contained all of my favourite components in a romance, from being snowbound in a cabin to the addition of cute children to spur on the relationship between the hero and heroine.

There were no real duds in this collection, and I’ve refrained from going into detail about some other excellent additions to this collection purely due to the constraints of writing a review that isn’t so long that you’ll feel like you’re reading my university dissertation. So I must briefly mentioned Kelly Eileen Hake’s Christmas Traps and Trimmings, which stood out because of the details about Mina’s English upbringing and the disaster that brought her and Sam together, but isn’t a favourite simply because ended a bit too abruptly to make me truly love it. Christmas Service by Erica Vetsch is also worth reading for the message it gives about ways in which to serve God that many young women are likely in need of hearing, but this same message ended up making the heroine difficult to sympathise with.

I did find Wanda Brunstetter’s The Christmas Secret and Liz Johnson’s A Star in the Night to be the weakest stories in the collection, for very different reasons. I’ve never been a fan of Wanda’s style of writing and this was still the case in The Christmas Secret, but I will admit that the plot was quite original and kept my interest. A Star in the Night was a sweet, gently blossoming romance but lacked any chemistry between the characters, especially as the author continually reminded the reader that the protagonists never spent time alone indoors together, which even in a historical setting felt a bit forced. I still enjoyed reading both of these stories despite their flaws, and it wouldn’t stop me from recommending this collection.

A Log Cabin Christmas is a collection to be savoured over a matter of weeks, not hours, and the length of the stories makes it easy to pick up and put down again during the busy holiday period. Historical romance readers will be pleased to see stories many popular authors in the genre featured, and to discover some new writers who will hopefully come to be just as admired.

Review title provided by Barbour Publishing.

Kelly's Chance - Wanda E. Brunstetter

GENRE: HISTORICAL ROMANCE
PUBLISHER: HEARTSONG PRESENTS
PUBLICATION DATE: JANUARY 1, 2004
RATING: 5 OUT OF 10


Life for Kelly McGregor is a daily drudge of driving her overbearing father’s mules along Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Canal. She dreams of one day owning an art gallery where her own drawings and paintings are on display. But these dreams don’t include marriage. . .not after seeing what her father has done to her mother. How then can Mike Cooper, a general store owner, make her realize he is different than her father and wants to support her artistic talent? Will Kelly learn that dreams can walk hand in hand with a love created by God?


Wanda E. Brunstetter is a very popular author in the Christian market, particularly when it comes to Amish and historical fiction, but I'm afraid I just don't see the appeal. This is the third book of hers that I've read and I must be missing something because I simply find her plots predictable and her characters one-dimensional. I feel like I'm being cruel, but there was very little that pulled me into this story and made me want to keep reading. I enjoyed learning about the canal and Kelly's painting, particularly the details of how she made her own watercolours. A few reviewers have commented that the canal descriptions were a bit confusing, and I suppose that if you weren't familiar with canals then they might be. I grew up very close to a town which still has canal boats on it today, and the good old British children's TV show "Rosie and Jim" also proved to be very educational on this subject, so I may not be your average reader. That said, aside from the inclusion of Kelly's hobby and occupation as mule-driver, there was very little that I felt was truly original about this book. Yes, I enjoy traditional romances, but this one felt rather flat.

There were a few occasions where I really felt I was starting to care about Kelly and Mike, but their conflicts never rang true. Kelly finally decided to let go of her preconceived ideas about men and marriage, but this was all very sudden at the end of the book, and it was never explained why she let go of them. Mike conveniently forgot why Kelly was hurt by her father, causing a Big Misunderstanding and argument between them, which was then cleared up about ten pages later. Their slow-moving romance seemed to culminate in a big explosion about twenty pages before the end of the book, and then everyone ever so conveniently got over their problems and lived happily ever after. It just seemed rather unbelievable. Not to mention that Kelly's distrust of men and marriage was never really explained, just vaguely related to her issues with her father. Yes, we are told that she doesn't want to marry someone just to get away from her father - but where's the shame in marrying someone for love, and happening to get away from her father at the same time? And while for the majority of the book Kelly insists that she wants to earn money so she can leave the canal boat, about two-thirds into the book she suddenly changes and says that she wants to use the money to open an art gallery. This seems to come completely out of nowhere, and seems a bit unrealistic for the time. And the epilogue was just ridiculously perfect, especially with Betsy and Kelly finally getting along and her father starting to turn to Christ. It felt unnecessary to try to wrap up every conflict in the book. Oh, and not to forgot the very unrealistic references to the Bible and God. I do enjoy the inclusion of everyday Christian values in my books, but nobody goes around quoting scripture, down to the verse and chapter, the way that these characters did. It all felt very forced, even to an avid reader of Christian fiction, almost as if the author was including verses in order to make the book more Christian.

I really did try to like this book, and while I enjoyed some of the historical details and the occasional cute snippets of Kelly and Mike's relationship, I can't say that I'll be able to remember much about this book in the days to come. I'll probably pass this on to my pastor's thirteen year old daughter, but I don't think I'll be recommending it to any of my friends. 


I chose to read this book as part of the August selections for the Fans of Amish Fiction book club on GoodReads.

The Journey - Wanda E. Brunstetter

GENRE: AMISH
PUBLISHER: BARBOUR PUBLISHING
PUBLICATION DATE: APRIL 1, 2011
RATING: 4 OUT OF 10 

When the chance to work as a carpenter in an Amish community in Kentucky arises, Titus Fisher jumps at the opportunity. Always in the shadow of his perfect twin brother, Timothy, and watched like a little child by his mother, Titus feels it’s time to find where he belongs in the world. And since this offer follows his girlfriend Phoebe’s announcement that she still isn’t ready to join the Amish church, Titus feels that perhaps it would do him some good to be away from the ties he has back home in Pennsylvania. Soon he’s settling into the rhythms of life in Kentucky, despite the dilapidated trailer he lives in and his lack of a buggy, and he strikes up a good friendship with the Yoder family, who are employing him to work in their carpentry shop. But it takes him longer to warm up to Suzanne Yoder, an unconventional young woman who prefers being in the outdoors and woodwork to cooking and sewing. But Suzanne looks just like Phoebe, and Titus can’t help but look of Suzanne and remember how Phoebe broke his heart when she went to explore the English world. Will Titus’s memories of Phoebe put a rift between him and Suzanne, or will he learn to let go of the past and discover what God has planned for him in Kentucky?

I will advise that while I tried to start this book with an open mind, I’ve never been a big fan of Wanda Brunstetter. While she’s incredibly popular in the Amish genre, which contains many of my favourite books, I’ve yet to figure out what is so appealing about her books. While many of them contain standard romance plots, I often find her writing stilted and her characters lacking in personality. Despite this, I determined to give her works another try with The Journey, which many of my friends have praised. The plot of this novel, while being fairly predictable, did sound like it had promise, particularly with Suzanne being such an unusual character for an Amish novel.

Unfortunately I found it very difficult to enjoy this book. As with previous Brunstetter novels (On Her Own, Plain and Fancy and Kelly’s Chance, to name those that I’ve read) I found the dialogue very stilted and fake-sounding, as were the internal thoughts of many of the characters. This was particularly jarring as the majority of The Journey is dialogue. I would say that at least 80% of this book was dialogue, and while normally I love conversation-driven novels, there was barely any description at all. Books in the Amish genre really need descriptions of the scenery and day-to-day life to make them seem authentic. Sadly, The Journey was very lacking in this department and could really have been set anywhere, if for the occasionally Pennsylvanian Dutch word and mention of a buggy. The Penn Dutch speech was pretty irritating in that whenever a character said anything in Dietsch, another character would then repeat the same sentence back almost word for word so that the reader would understand what the word meant. This sounded incredibly fake, and happened too often for me not to notice.

The plot jumped around too much for my liking, leaping back and forth between Titus in Kentucky and his family back home in Pennsylvania, and occasionally over to Phoebe in California. It seemed really unnecessary to include Phoebe’s sections as they really didn’t add much to the plot, other than to show that she wasn’t enjoying herself in the English world. The scenes in Pennsylvania were much the same, and seemed to repeat a lot of what had happened to Titus in Kentucky as word of his new life spread to all of her relatives. More often than not, these sections ended up detracting from the plot rather than adding to it.

There were a lot of dramatic events in this book, far too many than is realistic. On several occasions characters are nearly run off the road in their buggies - by a motorbike, a horse and wild dogs - and if these events had been connected I wouldn't have minded, but they weren't! These three events were never given any sort of plausible explanation that linked to the plot, and seemed mainly to function to bring Titus and Suzanne closer together in the aftermath of their experience. The first two events I shrugged off, but I’ll admit that I nearly laughed out loud at the appearance of the feral dogs. There's also a situation surrounding some stolen money which is cleared up far too quickly and easily to be at all believable, and then is never mentioned again by any of the characters. It felt like the author kept trying to insert some sort of mystery into the book but then resolved the situations too fast to actually make the book mysterious. And don't even get me started on all the deaths and tragedies that occurred with this family – is it really possible for one family to suffer so many traumas? Some of them seemed quite unnecessary, and the way that the characters dealt with them seemed rather offensive to anyone who has lost a relative or a child.

I have a few minor complaints about this book which, coupled with my issues with the dialogue, plot-jumping and unrealistic nature of some of the events in this book, ended up taking away from what could have been a fairly enjoyable reading experience. Firstly, The Journey apparently follows on from another series of books as numerous references are made to Zach having being kidnapped as a child. Yet for new readers, this situation isn’t explained very well and left me feeling very confused. There’s nothing in the synopsis to suggest that this series follows another one, so new readers beware of this. I’d also like to caution that while this book is marketed as Christian fiction, the spiritual aspect is very minor. The characters only ever talked to God when they were in dire need of help, but otherwise never mentioned Him, which is particularly unsettling for a novel about the Amish where God is normally central to their community and way of life. There’s a semi-conversion scene towards the end of the novel, which is one of my pet hates in Christian fiction because it is so rarely done in a tactful and satisfying manner.

While I did not enjoy this novel, I have read several glowing reviews of it and would encourage potential readers to read those before making a final decision on whether to read The Journey. As much as I hate to write a critical review, this is my honest opinion and I think it necessary to share my views on a book from one of my favourite genres. I’ve read many wonderful new books from this genre that have released this year, and The Journey just doesn’t measure up to novels from newcomers like Kelly Long, Barbara Cameron or Ruth Reid. On a more positive note, fans of Brunstetter will probably enjoy this book as it’s much the same as her earlier novels, but this also means that readers who dislike her work will probably have the same reaction as I did.

Review title provided courtesy of Barbour Publishing.

A Celebration of the Simple Life - Wanda E. Brunstetter

Join Brunstetter in celebrating the simple life of the Plain People! Pairing devotional readings and Scripture from the KJV with her original poetry, this gift book encourages you to reflect on your attitudes, responsibilities, and Christian duty in light of the Amish philosophy of simplicity. A breath of fresh air for those under stress! 

Such a lovely little book, I only wish I could have held the real thing rather than an eBook. This is a wonderful devotional that I know I'd love to own. There are over thirty reflections under the headings "Attitude", "Responsibility" and "Christian Duty" on subjects such as "A Humble Attitude" and "Responsibility to Fellowship." Each reflection includes a poem from Wanda Brunstetter, a Bible verse, a note from Brunstetter relating the scripture to an example in the Amish lifestyle and a small prayer. This is all completed with absolutely stunning photography that will simply take your breath away; I simply cannot emphasise enough how beautiful these pictures are. Although I'm not a fan of Brunstetter's fictional work, she does have a wealth of knowledge about the Amish and I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the Amish or loves reading novels about them or anyone who just wants to simplify their life. This would make the perfect gift or stocking filler as it isn't particularly large or expensive. I only wish I'd known about this when I was making my Christmas list! 10/10

Many thanks to Barbour and NetGalley for giving me the chance to read and review this book.

Plain and Fancy - Wanda E. Brunstetter

Is it good for two people-one plain, the other fancy-to fall in love? Laura Meade loves her modern life, yet she fascinated by the Amish culture in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where she is studying interior design. Upon their first meeting, she is immediately attracted to Eli Yoder, one of the Plain People, but Laura has no real concept about faith, God's love, and forgiveness of sins. Eli is also enamored with Laura, but to marry outside his faith would be forbidden. What then is the hope for love?

This is the second Wanda Brunstetter novel that I've read and I have to admit that I'm not really compelled to read any more of hers. This story was so simplistic with no space for originality or creativity - just a standard romance set in an Amish community. While it was a bit more fleshed out than the other novel I've read from this author - On Her Own - the characters were total caricatures and not developed enough to actually have motives behind their actions. And the speech was incredibly stilted and fake-sounding. Furthermore, the main character really irritated me - she was so selfish and childish, definitely not mature enough to be getting married and taking on all the responsibilities that an Amish wife and mother has! She only redeemed herself in the last few pages but by this point I was rather fed up with her. I'm giving this book 5/10 as it was fairly enjoyable to read and did keep my interest, even if I feel like I could write a more compelling novel myself! I have one more Brunstetter novel on my TBR and I really hope it's better than this - otherwise, I won't be trying any more of her books.

On Her Own - Wanda E. Brunstetter

Barbara Zook was devastated when her husband David was killed. Will she be able to raise their four young boys and manage her beloved David's harness store on her own? When harness maker Paul Hilty arrives in Webster County, Missouri, he finds himself agreeing to help run Barbara's shop. Things are going fairly well until widower Bishop John Frey comes a-courting Barbara, and Paul's jealousy takes everyone by surprise. Will Paul try to beat out the competition or end up hightailing it back to Pennsylvania? Will Barbara marry for love or be forced to enter into a marriage of convenience?

This was a fairly average romance, pretty much like Mills & Boon or Harlequin set in an Amish community with a Christian emphasis. I normally really enjoy the Amish genre - especially Amy Clipston and Beverly Lewis - but this is the first of Brunstetter's novels that I've read and I can't say that it's up to the standards I'm used to. This little book was only 170-odd pages long, my first clue that there wasn't much to the story, and had a fairly predictable plot. Due to the shortness of the book, the characters didn't have a lot of space to develop and this made it hard to really care about them, and although it was fairly well written, there were several moments where speech seemed stilted, particularly with Barbara's eldest son, Aaron. Also, is Barbara a typical Amish name? There were a couple of characters whose names made me do a double take. All in all, this isn't a taxing read and would be nice, light reading for someone who has a low reading level and needs to practice their reading. But other than that, it was just too formulaic and predictable and - well, a bit boring, especially after reading Clipston's A Promise of Hope, which is also about a widowed Amish woman. I have a couple of other Brunstetter books on my TBR and I'll give them a go but I can't say that I'm impressed with her work. I can say that I've been inspired to write a predictable Christian romance and get it published with this company to pay off my student loan though... 5/10