Review: Temptation by Karen Ann Hopkins

Summary/Cover Image from Publisher's Website:

Your heart misleads you. That's what my friends and family say.

But I love Noah. And he loves me. We met and fell in love in the sleepy farming community of Meadowview, while we rode our horses together through the grassy fields and in those moments in each other's arms. It should be ROSE & NOAH forever, easy.

But it won't be.

Because he's Amish. And I'm not.

Review:

As soon as I first heard about Temptation by Karen Ann Hopkins, I added it to my wish list. The premise sounded fascinating. I've always found the Amish community to be interesting so a book about them as well as two teens (one Amish and one not) who fall in love? What's not to love about that? Seriously... Plus, I've almost always have a good track record with Harlequin Teen and their books. As it turns out, Temptation was an amazing book...not only did it given me an inside look into the Amish community but it also introduced characters that I adored from the start as well as a story that was so hard not to love.

Temptation introduces alternating POVs from Rose, an English girl (as Noah calls her), and Noah, an Amish boy. Rose is the typical teen girl except for the fact that she's now living besides Noah and his family in the middle-of-nowhere Ohio. From the first page, I was instantly hooked on Rose's voice. She was such a sweet and interesting girl, and it was especially interesting to watch her learn about the Amish as well as fall in love with Noah. I especially enjoyed her takes on their community as well as comparing it to her own world. Noah, on the other hand, was another interesting character that I enjoyed reading about as well. When he first came into the scene, he was shy and not all that attention grabbing, but by the end, I really came to enjoy his POVs as well. Karen did a fabulous job of expressing his confusion over choosing his family and culture or Rose in realistic and emotional way. I also enjoyed seeing the Amish as well as the "English" as he calls anyone non-Amish. It was certainly eye-opening to say the least. The wide variety of other characters, such as Noah's family and Rose's, was fun to learn more about as well. Two of my favorites were definitely Sam, Rose's brother, and Sarah, Noah's sister who Rose befriends over the course of the book.

The premise of this was what originally caught my attention, and thankfully, I thought Karen did a great of fleshing it out to it's fullest potential. I found Noah and Rose's connection to be believable even if it did come after such as short time, and while I didn't always find their decisions to be extremely rational, it didn't stop me from rooting for them one bit. I also learned so much about the Amish in this which I just loved as well. I'm really curious to find out more in the sequel now! Temptation was also filled with the occasional plot twist that switched everything up and I really enjoyed that as well.

Hopkins's writing was also decent. I have to admit that at first I had a hard time getting into this one. It was often slow moving in the beginning as Karen established back story as well as Noah and Rose's relationship, but by the end, I was rapidly flipping the pages, dying to know what would occur next.

In all, Temptation is a strong debut novel and one I highly suggest to fans of the YA contemp genre. Just don't let the slowness at the start detour you, I promise it gets better.

Grade: B+

Temptation (Amazon, BN, Goodreads) is now out!

Source: Publisher via Netgalley