THE AMISH COWBOY’S HOMECOMING (HONEY BROOK, 2)

An Amish woman must choose between love and her career in this second romance in London’s Honey Brook series.

Isaac King and Grace Zook are Amish, but they’re nontraditional in some ways; he sports a cowboy hat instead of the flat-brimmed standard, and she prefers training horses on her father’s Pennsylvania ranch to kitchen and child care duties. Grace’s father, John, hires Isaac to train a half-wild horse named Cincinnati to be a well-mannered jumper—an intrusion that Grace takes as an attempt to exclude her from the family business. Isaac and Grace have different training methods; he deploys soft whispers and steady gazes while Grace fashions her apron into a scarecrow to herd the skittish steed. Her attempts to get the apparently married Isaac to quit by feigning romantic interest fall flat: “She made a point to glance up, batting her lashes flirtatiously….‘Got something in your eye?’ he asked.” But the revelation that he’s an eligible widowed father makes her genuinely interested in his strong hands, deep voice, and “bedroom eyes.” Passion ignites at a market fair where Isaac spies Grace’s leg up to her knee while she’s doing yoga and, after he falls into a puddle, Grace beholds his “white shirt, wet through.” A moonlit buggy ride, hand-holding, and kissing ensue, but an unexpected revelation causes a rift. London returns to the setting of Never an Amish Bride (2020) and again provides a well-observed, warmhearted portrait of Amish culture. Along the way, she effectively complicates that picture with knotty discontent, including claustrophobic marital discord between Grace’s brother Amos and his wife, Sarah, and an examination of the difficulty of squaring Amish conformism with impulses towards self-fulfillment. As usual, she explores this world with clear prose, sly wit, and moral seriousness—and without the thunderous sex of other romance genres, the restrained passions here resonate all the more.

A leisurely and entertaining love story that registers delicate feelings as well as intense desire.