Book Review - The Winnowing Season

I was excited to read The Winnowing Season by Cindy Woodsmall after reading the first book in the series. The previous book ended with the Byler and King families buying an abandoned orchard in Maine and preparing to move there. They intend to revive the orchard and establish an Amish community. From the beginning things don’t go as planned. Jacob takes off to care for a woman from his past. In the meantime Samuel realises he has feelings for Rhoda. Those two stories along with the work involved to get the orchard and settlement going should have been enough but the author decided to add in a story about Rhoda being framed for a crime. I did not enjoy this part of the story. It consisted of a lot of worrying and not so smart actions by various characters. Then all of a sudden it is solved and the book ends without finishing some other points that we have been reading about for a longer period of time. Sorry this sounds vague but any further description would spoil everything. By the end of this book I wanted to slap some sense into Rhoda and I didn’t like Jacob very much any more. I ended up liking Leah, Landon and Samuel more. Even though this was not my favorite Cindy Woodsmall book I am looking forward to the final book in the series to see how everything turns out. In general I have always enjoyed her books. I received this book for free from Waterbrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.