The Icecutter's Daughter Book Review

Title: The Icecutter's Daughter.

Author: Tracie Peterson.

Genre: Christian, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Romance.

Plot: Living with her widower father and four older brothers has it's perks and benefits - she gets to help raise the horses and run around in trousers without worry - but it also has it's draw backs, and one of those is that at nearly twenty-one, Merrill Krause is still unmarried. Her brothers keep the undesirable suitors away, but they also intimidate the potentially desirable ones too. And while she hasn't felt the want of a husband and family of her own before, it's still a hope nestled deeply in her heart. At least her cooking is the best in the town and wins prizes all the time.

But when Rurik Jorgenson arrives in town to help his aging uncle with the furniture business, Merrill isn't prepared for the wave of renewed hope for a family of her own. Because Rurik, unlike most men, is not in the least intimidated by her brothers. He in fact gets along marvelously with them - probably because he has brothers himself. With a small flower of love blooming in their hearts, the two are caught unawares when Rurik's former fiancee` and her brother roll into town, disrupting daily life and making things increasingly difficult for Rurik. With scandal and gossip whirling around the town thicker than snow, rising to a very serious pitch, Rurik and Merrill have never needed their trust in God more than now. But will it be enough?

Likes/Dislikes: This is my first Tracie Peterson novel and I rather liked it. It was a wonderful change to have characters with Swedish and German lineage, with words and phrases from their respective homelands thrown into the mix. I also really enjoyed that, despite it being a romance and the characters falling in love much too quickly for my taste, that there wasn't a lot of the usual jabberings about stolen glances, secret smiles, and all the butterflies in the stomach when their hands accidentally brush. Very refreshing in that sense. I didn't like how the description protrayed Merrill as having a "lack of femininity," because she was very feminine in my opinion. Of course, she wore trousers to keep her legs warm and didn't go in for all the lacy frilly stuff - I don't either - but she was very feminine. She dressed like a lady, wore her hair long, and delighted in baking, cooking, cleaning and all the feminine things. I liked that. I didn't care for the former fiancee` and her brother though; I have the tendency to wish certain characters would just die, but that didn't happen. *winks* All in all, a pretty good book.

Rating: PG-14 and up, mainly for reading level and content {hints of someone being pregnant out of wedlock, but not graphic}.

Date Report Written: April 9th, 2013.

I received this book free from the publishers in exchange for an honest review. I wasn't required to write a positive book review. The opinions expressed in the above review are my own.