Sara runs away from her Amish family to join her brother who also left the faith. The author uses the relationships and situations to explore the conflict between tradition, faith, and family. There is conflict between Sara’s nativity and secluded upbringing that conflicts with the level of education portrayed. However, the anguish she suffers from breaking family ties is very believable. ( )

This set of stories are keepers for me. I love how the author writes and the conversations that take place throughout the book. You get to read how people are thinking and feeling and I especially enjoyed the ending of this story. It made me both laugh and cry and I closed the book with a great feeling of contentment having gotten to know these characters.

As the back cover asks, "How do you follow your dreams when they pull you away from all you've known?"; that is the dilemma that 18 year old Sara Burkholder has to answer as she finds herself running away from her Amish home, to hopefully find her future in fashion design. (Sara is the sister to Levi, who you will have met in "Plain Jayne" and who also has left his Amish upbringing behind; it was good to catch up with him and Jayne in this story too.) Sara has long enjoyed the bright colors and fashions she has seen the Englishers wearing and yearns for the day she can fashion and work with those same materials. She is a determined, bright and mature young lady who has a lot of decisions she must face and a brand new world, with new friends she must adapt to. One of those new people will be her coworker, William Blythe. At first I didn't really care for this guy, but he grows on you. And I must say I was a little surprised by some of the things that happen near the end of the story, but the ending left me completely satisfied and so glad I read these two stories. In "Plain Jayne" (book one) you will meet and get to know a lot of the folks from this story, so I highly recommend you begin there. I had a great time and this is definitely a set of books that deserves to go on my book shelf. ( )

This book is a bit of a departure from the usual Amish fiction. As Sara has left her family and gone to live, work and study in the big city of Portland, OR, the book is more like "chick lit" with girls getting together for movie night, buying clothes, cooking, and falling in love. The only difference is the main character who is like a duck out of water. This was a fun and quick read. ( )

This is the second book of a series written by Hillary. The first being Plain Jayne.

Sara is an amish raised girl who decides she wants to try being non amish as she loves fashion. This is her story and is written so that you will fall in love with Sara as she struggles in the non amish world.

A great read. ( )

This was another fun read by Hillary Manton Lodge! I came across the book Plain Jayne while browsing in the library one day and thought it sounded like some light, enjoyable reading. I loved the book and noticed that it was the first book in a series, so I started doing some checking to find the second book, Simply Sara.

This book continued on where Plain Jayne left off. I loved being able to revisit the story of Jayne and her new boyfriend Levi. They are such a great couple, and I really enjoyed reading about their budding romance. This second book focuses on Levi's sister Sara, who, like her brother, decided to leave her Amish way of life to live in the English world. This story picks up as Sara acclimates herself to living with Jayne in the city, and her quest to go to fashion design school. It was just like the first book in that it was a quick and entertaining story, and I even caught myself smiling a couple times as I was reading. I don't know if there is another book or not, but I truly hope so! You can bet I will be looking for it!

For Amish fiction lovers like me, I highly recommend this series. Even if you've never read the genre, you should give these books a try. It is a fun, easy-to-read series, that caters to anyone's love of a happily-ever-after story. Hillary Manton Lodge has proved to me that she is an author that I will keep on my "favorites" list. ( )