The story moves at a moderate pace, which gives plenty of time to really care about the characters and their fates. The mystery in The Shunning was a bit predictable since I guessed two important secrets early in the book. Katie finds the experience miserable but will she confess and repent? A revealed family secret, plus a growing feeling that she might not belong with the Amish leads Katie to consider the huge and desperate step of leaving the community. Even her sweet and previously loving mother won’t talk to her.įor the Amish the event of Shunning is meant to be so horrible that the shunned person will fall back into line and do what the community requests.

Some of the saddest scenes are when Katie sits down to eat her dinner in her family kitchen, but at a separate table. No one is allowed to communicate with her in any way or they risk being shunned as well. A shocking event on her wedding days leads Katie to be shunned by the Amish Community. She likes to sing songs that aren’t in the official Hymn book and has even hidden a forbidden guitar that belonged to her first love Daniel, who drowned on his nineteenth birthday. What makes things difficult is that Katie has always been a rebel by Amish standards. Things already sound challenging, but Katie looks forward to becoming stepmother to five sweet children. She is soon to be married to widower Bishop John, who has five small children from his first wife. Katie Lapp is 22 years old, which is old to be unmarried in her small Amish community. I selected The Shunning by the complex method of walking along the Books on CD shelf and looking on the spine for a little red heart indicating romance. Romance is a genre I haven’t tried since I read Sloppy Sloshers (as my Grandmother called her Regency Romances from authors like Georgette Heyer) as a teenager. I love my job and one great aspect is exposure to all sorts of literature and encouragement to read things I don’t normally read.

The shunning book