Book Review: The Telling

Author: Beverly Lewis
Title: The Telling (Seasons of Grace Book 3)
Publisher: Bethany House
Publish Date: April 6, 2010
Buy: Amazon
Book Blurb: Grace Byler leaves Bird-in-Hand in a fancy car to search for her mother in Ohio. But what if Lettie Byler doesn't wish to be found? Meanwhile, Lettie continues her private quest to find the missing piece of her life. As clues take her from state to state, she is increasingly torn between the family she has left behind and the yearning for her long-lost child.

Struggling to come to terms with a grave medical diagnosis, Heather Nelson is determined to forgo traditional medicine--to her father's chagrin--in hopes of finding answers and healing in Amish country. But first, she offers to drive her Amish friend, Grace Byler, to Ohio.

Will mother and daughter, and one seriously ill graduate student, find the answers they long for? Or will "the telling" cause them all further pain?

Review: This book is truly groan worthy. The only reason I suffered through it, is because I read the first two in this trilogy.

I love Amish fiction, and I think that's why I'm drawn to Lewis' books. She's the Danielle Steel of that genre. And like Steel, too many books has taken away the "goodness" in her stories.

Everything is too formulated now. Perhaps that's the fault of a publisher that wants to make money off trilogies, when Lewis' stories would better be told in one longer volume.

That's the problem with the Seasons Of Grace trilogy. Book one sets up the story with a cliff hanger, book 2 meanders along, and book 3 wraps everything up in a nice bow. By the end of book 1 you knew exactly what was going to happen in book three and you knew who Lettie's first born was. Anyone reading could make that guess. It made the trilogy rather disappointing.

Then there was the story surrounding Heather, who is diagnosed with advance Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, a disease she shared with her adoptive mother. I couldn't quite believe that naturopathic treatment alone would bring her to a cancer free state.

This whole trilogy didn't work well for me, plus it put Grace's relationship with Yonnie on the back burner. I would have liked a little more romance in this book. It needed something, anything to make it worth finishing. After 4 days I managed to eek through 331 very painful pages. It will be a long while before I pick up another Beverly Lewis book.

Rating 2 flowers