Tricia Goyer is an outstanding writer. She dives into stories with a unique flair, combining faith and real life in an amazing way. Since reading her books we have become writing friends. While I don't always like Amish fiction, her books are different than most. They show the humanity and real life issues which impact all of us. I keep all of her books on my "read again" pile.

I enjoyed The Promise Box by Tricia Goyer but I kept feeling like I just wanted Lydia & Gideon ( the main story characters) to just be able to let the past go & look for a future together! I felt at times that the story was very redundant, and I really had a very difficult time understanding how Lydia was able to return back to the Amish lifestyle after such a short time.  I had great hopes for this book after reading The Memory Jar & several of Tricia Goyers other books which I absolutely loved but I'm sorry to say this is not one of my favorite novels of hers.

I enjoyed this story. Carolyn is a woman trying to protect children she loves. They lost their home and belongings in a flood. Michael comes to help rebuild the community. Carolyn was Amish but is pretending to be Mennonite for safety. Michael is an Amish man, not yet baptized, who is questioning his faith. Neither is looking for love. 
I loved Carolyn and the way she cares for Kevin and Rose Anne. It touched me how she was doing the best she could to raise the children as her own. I like that the author brought out how Carolyn rationalized things in her mind and heart. I like Michael a lot. I enjoyed watching him develop a relationship with the children as well as with Carolyn. They both though are hiding parts of their background that affect their lives. Will they be able to move forward? It was a very touching story. 
I received an ebook copy of this title through NetGalley for review consideration. I voluntarily chose to review it. All thoughts are mine.

I’ve been listening to this one on audio from the library. I forgot I had this on my kindle.

Anyway, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought due to the never ending secrets and lies, it just got too extreme in some parts.

So not the best choice I’ve made.

If you had stopped by my house this weekend, you would have found me crying over the fictional characters from Tricia Goyer’s latest Amish novel, The Promise Box. This book moved me because the heart of the story is the damaged relationship between a mother and daughter. The mother doesn’t understand her daughter’s choices. The daughter doesn’t appreciate her mother’s sacrifices.

And the healing they need almost comes too late.

I lost my mom in February. Though our circumstances differ from Ada Mae’s and Lydia’s, I could relate to the soul-searching that comes when human love doesn’t seem to be enough to repair a fraying bond.

Watching these characters find the answers in Jesus was a beautiful experience.

And I especially love that a simple wooden box filled with letters and God’s promises became the vehicle that helped them communicate.

So will reading The Promise Box benefit you? Yes! 

Read this book for your daughter. 
Or your mother.
Read this book with them.
Discuss what keeps the characters apart and what ultimately brings them together.
Begin a Promise Box of your own.
Celebrate the people God gave you to love, mentor, and cherish.


What’s also great about this book is that the author knows well the birth mom/adoption experience that the character Lydia goes through. Tricia Goyer is the founder of Hope Pregnancy Ministries in Northwestern Montana, and she currently leads a Teen MOPS Group in Little Rock, AR.

Tricia is a godly mentor to many young women. You can trust her with the teen girls in your life. Connect with Tricia at her website and read about her service to teen moms, parenting books, marriage advice, homeschooling tips, and much more!

Oh, and did I mention it’s a romance? This is the second book in the Seven Brides for Seven Bachelors series. As the book blurb says, “Every year, young Amish men descend on the cozy little town of West Kootenai, Montana, arriving in the spring to live there for six months and receive ‘resident’ status for the hunting season in the fall. They arrive as bachelors, but go home with brides!” This story focuses on Lydia and Gideon as they meet, become friends, and then realize God means for them to be more than friends—another aspect of the book you’ll love.

A third plus: as a teacher, I really enjoyed the classroom scenes as Lydia begins her teaching career in a one-room Amish schoolhouse.

The West Kootenai community in Montana is a place where Amish and Englisch live and work side by side. It’s off the beaten path and is difficult to locate on a map. It’s also the setting for Tricia Goyer’s earlier Big Sky series, and many characters from it appear in The Promise Box. Because of the many references to events during that series I suggest reading that first so you know what happened.

Lydia and Gideon have a fiery first meeting. When he notices an Englisch woman taking a photograph of the Wyse property Gideon confronts her, not knowing that she is the prodigal Wyse daughter. An attraction blooms between them, one they both initially avoid due to their differences. Her baptism into the Amish faith removes many of those differences. Instead, they find common ground. Both harbor guilt for events that weren’t their fault and that they couldn’t have controlled. Both need to let go and accept the blessings in their lives. 

The Promise Box focuses, as the title suggest, on God’s promises to His people. Even during the darkest times – and all of us have witnessed many, I’m sure – we are reminded that He is there for us and can bring positives from the negatives in our lives and of our characters. This is illustrated in the wayward horse named Blue that Gideon is training. The owners had thought Blue untamable and contemplated having him put down. But with Gideon’s careful and patient training, Blue becomes a remarkable creature. 

There are many books in the Amish fiction market. These recent contributions by Tricia Goyer stand out in the crowd. The setting of Montana is different and therefore necessitates the description of the challenges presented by living in the northwest. You don’t find much mention of bears in books set in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana, for example. Also in these books, the Englisch are regarded more as friends than nuisance tourists to be tolerated. If you’re looking for Amish novels that aren’t as ‘cookie-cutter’ as others on the shelves, I definitely recognize these by Tricia Goyer. 

Thank you to Tricia Goyer and Zondervan for my free copy of The Promise Box, which I received in exchange for an honest review.

The Promise Box is book two in Tricia Goyer's Seven Brides for Seven Bachelors series, but you certainly do not need to have read book one, The Memory Jar, first. If you have read The Memory Jar, you'll recognize some of the characters in The Promise Box ... and if you've read Goyer's "Big Sky" series, then you're really in for a treat, as the Sommer family from that series makes a return appearance here.

I really enjoyed reading The Promise Box ... and not just because I got to check back in with some characters from Goyer's other novels! The Promise Box is all about finding out who God made you to be. For Lydia, that meant coming to terms with the circumstances of her birth and embracing the Amish community. It also meant embracing the God she had long forsaken. Lydia recognizes that she could love God and have a vital relationship with Him as an Englischer, but she feels God calling her back to the Amish. And that—the focus on God, rather than the idealization of the Amish lifestyle—is what makes Goyer's Amish books different from so many others currently on the market.

I'm a big fan of Goyer's writing, and I'm happy to say that The Promise Box lives up to her standards. 4-1/2 stars.

I’ve been reading Amish novels since I was a teenager. I love them! Unfortunately, I had a hard time getting involved with this one. It didn’t capture me like some of Tricia’s books have in the past. I’d read a few pages, then set it down and do something else. That bothered me, and I wondered what was wrong with me! It took me several weeks to finish the book, because it just didn’t draw me in.
 
The story was sweet in itself and had proper development, but I didn’t feel a lot of emotion (i.e. love or interest) between the two characters. It almost felt like they were being drawn together by sheer force by the author. I enjoyed the progression of the story about Lydia. Tricia did a good job about making me wonder about what actually happened to Lydia and where she’d come from. However, I felt that Gideon’s history seemed unrealistic and trivial in comparison.
 
There was some slang used in this story, but it wasn’t overwhelming. This is a problem many others struggle with. Being an Appalachian, the overuse of slang in a story bugs me–it seems forced and unrealistic. The Amish also have their own slang, and sometimes that can get a bit overwhelming in an Amish novel. Thankfully, this wasn’t a big issue for me. There was one spot in the story where I thought slang should have been left out. It was in Chapter Seven in the letter from Lydia’s adoptive mother. The going back and forth from using “yer” to “your” felt unrealistic. I know “yer” is often used in conversation among the Amish in novels (the same as Ja or ach), but in a letter, the fact that she used “your” equally to “yer” made me feel like the character wouldn’t have thrown in “yer” as well. Otherwise, the character’s spelling was correct, so the misspelling of your didn’t make sense.
 
Overall, this story was a nice read. If you enjoy Amish fiction, I think that you will enjoy this one, too.

Having just read The Memory Jar (first in this series) before this one, it felt like I was returning to the small community of West Kootenai after having been away for a few days.  While I question that community’s ability to rival the great Alaskan wilderness, there is something appealing of the small town atmosphere and an environment which has you considering God’s hand in creation.   Kudos to Ms. Goyer on selecting the setting for this particular series and for doing a wonderful job at describing it all.

 

As for the story, I found it interesting to have the protagonist ultimately write her story of returning to the Amish community.  It’s really as if Lydia wrote it all down and then Ms. Goyer pulled it together for a final edit.  Very interesting change of pace for how a story is written. 

I loved the candid look at struggles faced when trying to re-embrace both her faith and community.  And, how Lydia found love when she was neither expecting or looking for it.  I truly believe that when we are open to God’s will we will find more than we could ever dream.  That’s a big part of the message I got from this particular novel.

But the ‘icing’ on the cake is where the title comes from ~ the promise box.  This precious gifts to Lydia from her mother contains so much wisdom between Scripture versus that reminded her mother of God’s promises and letters written to express her love.  I can easily see a gift like this being priceless.