When Micah, in An Unlikely Amish Romance, boldly strokes Susannah’s hair, the act’s potentially volcanic eroticism is doused by the fact that Susannah’s once presumably luxuriant tresses have been reduced to a bob: a result of the chemo she received for ovarian cancer. “I admire your spiritual and emotional strength,” delivered sans exclamation point, is your typical throes-of-passion utterance. In the books I read, kisses were mostly administered to women’s foreheads, and in a reassuring, paternal fashion. Sex isn’t mentioned, let alone done: A prolonged gaze or the entwining of fingers is about as heavy as the petting ever gets. You could say their challenge isn’t to think outside the box, trope-wise, but to rearrange things inside that box while avoiding splinters from all the hand-planed maple strapping.įifty Shades of Grey, in the context of the genre, could only be taken as family laundry drying on a line. Within romance’s already highly prescribed narrative world, where plots are predictable and just details change, Amish romance authors have an even more limited palette to work from.
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A key promise across all series – whether in Amish-themed novels or the new LGBTQ+ “Carina Adores” romance line – is the guarantee of a happy ending, with “happy” being relative to the desires of individual characters. “As a computer expert, leading a life off the grid isn’t easy for Celeste” reads the blurb for Amish Hideout, “But will staying in Jonathan’s childhood home save her … and convince them a future together is worth fighting for?” Starting in spring, 2021, Harlequin plans to publish novels with longer, more complex stories about Amish characters to “provide a broader scope for authors to explore more multifaceted stories about Amish life.”Īll their category romance titles come with the Harlequin “promise.” This is essentially a trigger warning, but for pleasure, alerting readers to a book’s tropes and eventual outcome. There are miniseries such as Amish Witness Protection, in which Englischers – the Amish word for outsiders – seek refuge from evildoers among the Amish (also the memorable theme of the 1985 Harrison Ford film Witness). Searching “Amish” on their website yields more than twelve thousand hits books with titles such as The Amish Midwife’s Courtship, Jedidiah’s Bride, Second Chance Amish Bride, Amish Triplets for Christmas and The Amish Teacher’s Dilemma. Over the past five years, Harlequin has tripled its output of Amish-themed novels. market), and that the company continues “to publish titles within this category based on consumer demand and sales appetite for more.” Harlequin couldn’t provide sales figures, but Farah Mullick, the publisher’s senior director of global series marketing, confirmed that Amish romance sells in the millions (and particularly well in the U.S. Amish romance has since become a mainstay for Harlequin, which publishes it as a subgenre within its “Love Inspired” Christian romance series, among others. When Canada’s romance behemoth, Harlequin, started publishing Amish romance in 2010, some believed the genre, already a phenomenon in the United States for decades, had already reached its peak.
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In Emma Miller’s The Christmas Courtship, Phoebe almost rips open a letter from her mother at one point, but it concerns her young son, whom she hasn’t seen in ages, so the histrionics are understandable. In the publishing world, Amish romance novels have long been referred to as “bonnet rippers.” It’s an irresistible play on words, although not an entirely accurate one: Very little gets ripped in these books, least of all bonnets – or, more precisely, prayer kapps.