Yesterday, I finished reading
The Lesson by Suzanne Woods Fisher and was delighted to have finally gotten to a book focused on Mary Kate Lapp as I adored her from the first
Stoney Ridge Seasons book. She was a much needed breath of spontaneous air all throughout the series. I hope that we see her again in other books....I'll explore the reasons why below.
The Lesson opens (more or less) with a new family moving into Stoney Ridge, Mary Kate - antsy as usual, and a scooter accident. The minor scooter accident ends up putting Mary Kate in charge of the Amish school for an entire term while she contemplates the direction her life is going to head off in.
Meanwhile, Chris Yoder and his little sister, Jenny, set out to spruce up an old family home while awaiting the day they inherit the place and hoping that their drug-addict mother does nothing to upset their apple-cart until Chris turns 21.
I liked this book pretty well, but it wasn't as good as I had hoped it would be given the quality of
The Keeper and
The Haven (the other
Stoney Ridge series volumes). I felt like not enough of Mary Kate and Chris burgeoning relationship was explored amidst everything else going on in the book. I also thought more would happen with MKs former enemy and now friend Jimmy, but his character went out like a wet firework after a volume spent on him being bad, badder, and baddest. I hope that we encounter the young man in another book and that he sets himself straight.
While I was pretty happy that MK and Chris ended up together, I just wanted to see a nicer resolution to that storyline and have Perry Mason come in and twist Chris and Jenny's mom into a legal pretzel. I'm not accustomed to my Amish fiction ending with 50% happy and 50% up in the air questions/darker thoughts. In a way, I think it is nice that Suzanne Woods Fisher is expanding the genre and making it more realistic or true-to-life (which I have often commented on before), but I also miss having a book tied up with a pretty little bow at the end.
What
was super duper nice about this book was encountering a married Amos and Fern several years after their relationship bloomed in
The Haven. It was nice to have Amos with somebody after he dealt with so many health issues in the prior volumes.
On a scale of 1-5, I would give this book a 4 any day of the week. I like that Fisher's fiction always keeps us guessing.
Disclosure: I received an eGalley of this volume for review. As always, my thoughts are my own.