When the Heart Cries Book Review

I was looking at my pile to find out what the next book was going to be and realized that my pile might have gotten out of control.  I got the whole series of two different series and another book that I wanted to read and found on the shelf.  It was great but hard to pick which one to read next but I picked up When the Heart Cries (Sisters of the Quilt, Book 1) by Cindy Woodsmall.  I was glad that I had the whole series when I started so that I could go from one book to the next without waiting for the library to get the others in the series but that might have led to my confusion over which book to pick.

In this book, Hannah Lapp, 17 year old Amish girl, has built a friendship and relationship with someone outside the Old Order Amish.  She is in love with Mennonite Paul Waddell and has been seeing him for three years.  He lives with his grandmother in the summer months which is near Hannah but returns to college every fall to study social work.  Before he leaves for his final year of school, he asks Hannah to marry him.  Hannah accepts knowing that her choice will change her relationship with her family forever.  The evening that they get engaged, Hannah walks home and she is attacked by an Englisher in a car.  Her life is changed forever in that minute and she faces loosing everything.

This book was a slow start and I was shocked by what happened near the beginning of the book.  The subject matter was so deep and heavy that it was hard to pick up the book and do a little light reading.  I was reading very slowly at the beginning and then I finally got into it and had to find out what happened next.  When that happened, I got a lot of reading done in a very short amount of time.  When the book was over, I was ready to pick up the next and start it immediately.  I luckily couldn't reach it and decided to go to bed since it was really late (or early depending on how you look at it) but I needed to get some sleep before going on to the next book.  It is a great story with great characters but be prepared that this is not light summer reading and had a very heavy subject matter.  I hope that you check it out and read this series too!  Let me know what you think!  I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did after I got into the book.