The Courtship Plan

by Kathleen Fuller

Things aren’t going well for Charity Raber as she looks for a job and a husband in Birch Creek. She was one of many young ladies responding to an ad that said there were a lot of young Amish men in Birch Creek looking for wives. Charity is thin with bright red hair and more freckles than can be counted. Because of a difficult family background, she comes across as…odd. She is too eager, her speech is unfiltered, and she just doesn’t know how to act around her peers. She was even set up with a date as a prank by one brother fooling another. She escapes more embarrassment by moving to Marigold where she is hired as a caregiver to Shirley, a kind English woman. To her dismay, just as she is adjusting well, one of the brothers moves in next door.

Charity wants love and sets out to get a husband with the aid of library books that hold some pretty bad advice and lead Charity into some situations that are very funny. The interactions between Shirley and Charity with their neighbor Jesse are the basis of a good story that is mostly not a fairy tale romance. A fun addition is Shirley’s escape artist dog Monroe. A serious complication is Charity’s relationship with her father and stepmother.

Love and forgiveness are strong themes that move forward an interesting story. Charity is a complicated character with a complicated background. She is the underdog protagonist that you will root for, but a happy ending seems difficult to achieve.

I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Rating: 5/5

Category: Christian, Romance

Notes: #1 in the Amish of Marigold Series. This book references a prank that I had also read about in the last book of the Amish Mail-Order Bride Series, but they are really independent series. The reader will get all the information needed right in The Courtship Plan.

Publication: January 17, 2023—Zondervan

Memorable Lines:

He’d called her weird and a pest. He wasn’t the first one to throw those awful adjectives at her. That honor was reserved for her mother.

When he’d told her Shirley cared, her heart leapt. Someone cared about her. She soaked that in like a dried-up sponge sitting in a saucer of fresh water.

She replaced her kapp with a kerchief and tried to bolster her own spirits, like she always had. but she failed. She was tired, so tired of being her own cheerleader.