A Beautiful Arrangement Book Review

Book Description

Can Lydia and Samuel find love in their marriage of convenience?

Lydia still can’t believe that she is Mrs. Samuel Bontrager. Or that she is seventeen with  a six-month-old daughter. As Baby Mattie grows fussier by the day, Lydia wonders how she will survive a lifetime of marriage to a man she doesn’t love—at least not in the way she wants. 

Samuel knows that he and Lydia did the right thing by marrying when Lydia became pregnant. He has even grown to love Lydia, though he never seems able to say the words out loud. What if she doesn’t love him back? After all, she pushes him away whenever he tries to draw closer. 

When Lydia and Samuel introduce their mutual friends Beverly and Joseph to each other, they are as envious as they are delighted to watch their friends fall in love. But just as Samuel thinks Lydia might be softening to him, she gets involved in investigating the mysterious past of a local homeless woman—a curiosity that threatens to drive the couple further apart. 

The third and final novel in the Amish Journeys series by bestselling author Beth Wiseman explores how wounds from the past must come to light before they can hope to heal.

My Thoughts

Samuel and Lydia’s story has been in the background for the entire Amish Journeys series, and A Beautiful Arrangement finally gave me the opportunity to explore it further. Getting pregnant before marriage, much less before baptism in the Amish faith is unheard of, and Samuel and Lydia’s parents all force them to marry before their baby is born and before they really know each other as well as they should.

Also included is the story of their friends Beverly and Joseph, how their courtship begins, and their joke with each other about someday wanting to have a family of ten children. (More power to them, I say!) What is not expected is that Beverly has a secret that she has been keeping from Joseph, and she is afraid that if she reveals it, he will end their relationship.

And yet, one more story is present – that of crazy Margaret Keim, an old lady who lives in a ragged blue truck. While it is not the Amish way to openly minister to outsiders, Lydia believes she is being called by God to reach out to this women who so clearly needs help.

Multiple storylines, but all of them were tied together in a beautiful way. Each one revealed that honesty is so important in the foundations of a new relationship, and that even lying by omission can damage trust that is slowly being restored. When you’re as young as Samuel and Lydia, it’s hard to learn these lessons while also navigating a brand new marriage that neither of them were fully prepared for. They never had the chance to experience falling in love like their friends were doing, but they both have a fierce love for the daughter they share. Among all the bumps and bruises, they slowly find their way to show each other the love they’ve been holding inside.

Beth Wiseman will always be one of my favorite authors for the Amish fiction genre as her stories are multi-faceted and her characters endearing. I’m sad to see this series come to an end, but love the journey it took me on.

4 Stars

**This book contains affiliate links, and I may be compensated upon your purchase of any item through those links.

**This book and series has a Jewelry Stories post. Click here to see what I was inspired to create after reading A Beautiful Arrangement.

**Would you like to read my reviews of the first two books? Click here for book 1, Hearts in Harmony, and here for book 2, Listening to Love.

**Here’s my favorite quote from A Beautiful Arrangement.