Book review: Sarah's Choice

Sarah's Choice by Wanda Brunstetter is the third book in the Brides of Lehigh Canal series.  I did not read the first two books at all, so this book is fine to read alone.  Sarah's Choice is about Sarah Turner a mother of  three.  Sarah's husband got killed in an accident working the canal locks.  Sarah is forced to take his hard labor job and do the best she can for her children.  She also sells bread to the boatmen to help bring in more money.  She also dreams of opening a bakery someday as she is an excellent baker.  Sarah gets help from family and church friends to help with watching her children.  We also meet Elias who inherits his grandfathers boat and decides to give up his newspaper job to run the boat since he felt his grandfather wanted him to care for it.  We also meet the town blacksmith who grew up with Sarah and always had an interest in her.  Sarah has decided too many accidents have happened on the canal and she grew walking the mules on the trail.  She has bad meomeries of the canal and vws to get her kids out of there.  That means she will not marry a boatman.  She is asked by both Elias and the town blacksmith to marry.  What will she choose?  That's the choice Sarah has to make.

I have read a lot of Wanda Brunstetter's books.  They have all been about the Amish, so this one was a little different for me.  I had a hard time reading at first for several reasons.  First, there was nothing to tell you that she was changing scenes.  Like in the beginning it goes from meeting Sarah and her kids to meeting Elias with his family.  That may be because this is an advanced copy of the book, but that took me a little while to get used to that happening.  I also was kind of lost when she started talking about mules leading the boats.  This could be because I did not read the previous books in the series.  I did learn about the canal from reading this book though.  I also liked how this was a romance but without all the romance.  The characters did not really spend a lot of time together but fell in love.  I really liked this book.  It was a quick read once I got into it.

Thanks to NetGalley and Barbour Publishing for allowing me to read this book.  I was given the galley to read but not paid for this review.   The book comes out on December 1st.  I'd recommend it to readers who enjoy Wanda Brunstetter's other books.