A nice story with a good message but I found myself skimming through a lot of the middle chapters. ( )

Not your typical sappy romance. This story has meat to it. Two completely different families figuring out what tomorrow will hold. ( )

Raised in a close-knit Amish family, Rachel Yoder did toy with the idea of not returning from her Rumspringa but she did, marrying Jacob. Jacob is dead now and Rachel and her daughter Katie have returned home to help her family. In New York, Ellie Shore is consumed with her public relations career to the point she ignores her love life and family at times. The two seemingly have little in common but when they discover they were switched shortly after birth and sent home with the wrong family, each decides to live with their biological families for a while to get a taste of what their life might have been like. Each of them will find themselves and their lives forever changed.

"A Plain and Fancy Christmas" is an interesting, at times thought provoking, novel about two women whose worlds unexpectedly collide. Author Cynthia Keller does lean a bit toward making the Amish lifestyle seem more appealing but she does do an excellent job of showing how such news can initially shatter each family yet ultimately pull them together and perhaps make them stronger. I thought the novel got off to a bit of a slow start as Keller built the characters of Rachel and Ellie, but once the switched at birth thing was brought into the book the pace picked up quickly and the book became quite interesting. Keller does an excellent job of showing how Rachel and Ellie cope in their new worlds (again since Keller seems to lean towards the Amish lifestyle, Ellie seems to adjust more easily than Rachel). The characters may handle the situation a bit too easily (Rachel and Ellie do seem to struggle with their changes - Rachel especially so - but their families accept things far too easily) but it is a Christmas novel after all. While Keller does guarantee a happy ending for all, she puts in an unexpected twist not seen in many Amish novels which is a very nice touch.

"A Plain and Fancy Christmas" is a nice holiday novel. ( )

Think about what you would do, if as an adult, you discovered that your whole life was built on a lie. What if everything you believed in – your family, your faith, even your aspirations as encouraged by your parents – really weren’t your own? What if you suddenly discovered why you didn’t look like your siblings or parents, why you always felt like somehow you didn’t belong, why you vaguely seemed to be missing something in life? How would you react if at age 30, you discovered that as an infant you were given to the wrong parents by a doctor at the hospital where you were born? This is the dilemma faced by two woman; one born Amish but raised by “English” parents, one born “English” but raised Amish – a situation known only by one doctor and his wife, a nurse, and only brought to light when the dying nurse confessed her deceased husband’s long buried secret. The author does a remarkable job in conveying the anguish both families go through, trying to understand and cope with this most unusual turn of events. A well crafted story, this tale will make you ponder just how much of our personalities are formed by heredity and not necessarily by environment. ( )

In "A Plain & Fancy Christmas", Cynthia Keller offers a very intriguing human quandary in an unusual setting. I believe that who we become as individuals is as much a matter of our environment as it is our genetic heritage. This is a "switched at birth story" with a twist: at birth, the daughter of an Amish couple is given to a well-heeled New York family, and the city baby goes home to be raised in the Amish community. Both of the girls are fortunate to have loving family homes, yet each of them yearns for something unknown to make them feel complete. When the widow of the doctor who made the mistake in a drunken stupor actually reveals the secret thirty years later, many lives are changed forever. Ellie is the Amish girl raised as a New Yorker, and Rachel is the city girl raised among the Amish. After they meet face to face, they eventually decide to try on each other's lifestyle for size. The characters are appealing, the story line offers much food for thought, and the ending is satisfying and seasonal. This is a somewhat slow read, but it is eventually quite worth staying with until the end. How would any of us handle this total life upheaval? Haven't you ever wondered what your life would be like if you had different parents, and were raised in a completely different environment? If so, then you will very much enjoy "A Plain & Fancy Christmas".

Review Copy Gratis Amazon Vine ( )