Review Return to Grace by Karen Harper
Hannah Esh fled the Home Valley Amish community with a broken heart, throwing herself into her worldly dreams of a singing career instead. But as much as she tries to run from her past, something keeps pulling her back. On a whim, she brings four worldly friends to the Amish graveyard near her family’s home for a midnight party on Halloween. But when shots are fired and one of her friends is killed, Hannah is pulled back into the world of her past.
The investigation into the shooting uncovers deep-buried secrets that shock the peaceful Amish village to its core. Determined to prove her value to the community she left behind, Hannah attempts to bridge two cultures, working closely with both handsome, arrogant FBI agent Linc Armstrongand her former betrothed, Seth Lantz, now widowed with a young daughter.
Caught between Seth and Linc, between old and new, Amish and worldly, Hannah must choose her future. Unless a killer, bent on secrecy, chooses it for her.
A fantastic character driven romance, where the main focus is on the internal struggles of a woman fighting her heart and her mind, her talent and her faith, her past and her future to carve out life for herself that fulfills her in every way.
Hannah initially left Home Valley because Seth, cheated on her got Leah His former wife, pregnant, then had to marry her. Now 3 years later, a successful singer, she is partying with her friends, well attending a gathering in a nearby cemetery when shots ring out and her friend Tiffany is killed, but Leah’s gravestone is also marred in the melee, which brings Seth back into Hannah’s life.
This was all about Hannah and her return home, and how the rest of the world effects the Amish community and how the community can effect the outside world. Whats better, the secrets kept in the technology free dark, or the dark falsely lit with florescence.
To explain anymore about the story would be to give away the plot which is superb so I won’t ruin it for you, but I will say the following, Karen Harper knows how to write a mystery that feels so real, yet is so completely creepy it is insidious, it truly feels like this could happen right next door. I both loved it, and hated it.
Fantastic introduction to Amish suspense and romance, with the beauty of the Simple people and the complexity of an FBI drama.
Overall Rating: B+
