Temptation (Temptation #1) by Karen Ann Hopkins

Temptation (Temptation #1)
by Karen Ann Hopkins
383 pages
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Release Date: June 26th 2012
Rate: Enjoyed it

*I was given this book for an honest review.*

Synopsis:

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.

Temptation is the sweetest story I have ever read about an almost impossible love between an Amish boy and an English girl.
The synopsis of this book sums up perfectly the story without giving anything away and without missing the main point. Rose moves to the country with her family, her two brothers and her dad, after her mother passed away. She leaves everything behind: her friends, her dance lessons, her home and a modern house, not like the ones she has to live in now. But as soon as they arrive, the Amish family next door greet them and that's when Rose thinks that, after all, it might not be all bad to live there because she meets Noah. Handsome, polite and Amish Noah, who cannot stop staring the wild girl covered in mud.
Although they are warned against each other, they find themselves drawn to one another and that's when their romance starts. They start falling in love while trying to figure out how they relationship could work since they belong to different worlds.

Their impossible and kind of forbidden love reminded me to that well-known shakespearean story about Romeo and Juliet, yet I can't say that Noah and Rose didn't become an epic couple, because they did. And their story was perfectly told by Ms. Hopkins.
There's no tragical love in this story, but it's replaced by the fact that Noah is Amish and Rose's not and if they want to be together, one of them must leave their families, their home and their entirely world to life in the other's. It brings the tragic, doomed and forbidden touch to the story, and, I must say, that's one of the main reasons I wanted to read this book in the first place.
I was not disappointed and Noah and Rose's love story proved me that they are one of those epic couples you ache to read more about them even when the story ends.

What I liked the most about this book was, not only Noah and Rose's story, but the fact that you could read from both, Noah and Rose, point of views. Ms. Hopkins writing is flawless and shocking. She perfectly differentiated Noah, with his Amish beliefs and masculine personality, from Rose, with her girly and at the same time boyish personality, always reminding everyone without meaning it to that she's a free woman.

Also, entering Noah's world was also fascinating. You not only read a beautiful YA romance between a girl and an Amish boy, but you learn about the Amish, too. I know that Karen Ann Hopkins must've done a lot of research and be very well inform, because everything that I've read about Noah's life was believable and simply amazing. I loved that I had the change to learn little bit more about the Amish world.

There's no denial that this book captivated me from the very first page. Noah and Rose's love story is like no other and their struggle to keep together at such a young age is simply admirable, romantic and... epic. You see that their love for each other is not a childish romance that soon they'll forget and reading how they fight for each other is worth it. And that's why I'm giving this book four gorjuss dolls and encouraging you to read this wonderful YA romance. You'll not regret it.

A native of New York State, Karen Ann Hopkins now lives with her family on a farm in northern Kentucky, where her neighbors in all directions are members of a strict Amish community. Her unique perspective became the inspiration for the story of star-crossed lovers Rose and Noah. When she’s not homeschooling her kids, giving riding lessons or tending to a menagerie of horses, goats, peacocks, chickens, ducks, rabbits, dogs and cats, she is dreaming up her next romantic novel.