Friday, May 25, 2012

Book Review: The Scent of Cherry Blossoms by Cindy Woodsmall

The first three chapters of this book felt cheesy and forced.  It was very difficult to read in light of this and took me many weeks to work up the motivation to finish the book.  Once I did pick the book up again, I was pleased to discover that the next chapters fell into rhythm and were more realistic.  The author chose the interesting topic of Amish versus Mennonite lifestyles.  I enjoyed reading about the romance of Aden and Annie as it developed. I appreciated that the book stayed pure and innocent in the blossoming relationship and did not seek to explore a physical relationship between the characters.  I also enjoyed reading about the various tensions that their relationship was causing on family members and their struggle to decide whether or not their love is worth pursuing in in light that their respective religious communities view them as unequally yoked, despite both having faith in God.  Although I enjoyed the middle of the book, I was greatly disappointed by the final chapter in which Aden and Annie were given permission to pursue their relationship. The author had spent the entire book mentioning all of the potential problems that the Amish and Mennonite communities would have with Aden and Annie's relationship, however, she chose to not discuss what actually happened, but simply gave an abbreviated recap that the communities would indeed have issues with the relationship, but they would resolve in time (a description that did not match the hype played up throughout the book).  Overall this is a clean book that would be appropriate for single teenagers to read.

Here is a link for an excerpt and videos.

http://waterbrookmultnomah.com/catalog.php?work=206745

I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.