I really liked it. I want to know what happened to Rachel and the rest of her family. ( )

This book has been sitting on my shelf for too long. I started reading it and I liked it a lot.
Partly because it gave more information on orthodox Jewish life and habits, also because I grew very fond of the rebel daughter.

It was a nice and quite easy book to ( )

This novel tells of Rachel, a teenager and the oldest child of a Chasidic family in upstate New York. Thwarted by the restrictive culture of ultra-Orthodox Judaism, she pines for more freedom in her life.

Light and easy to read, The Romance Reader peeps into the fascinating culture of Chasidic Judaism. I especially loved reading about how Rachel handled the situation in which she was forced to meet the young man selected by the matchmaker to be her future husband. Though very well written, I felt it ended too abruptly. I wanted to read much more about Rachel's life. I do hope that Ms. Abraham continues to write stories which share this very special culture with the world. ( )

It's a coming of age story set in a very particular Chassidic family in a very particular Chassidic sect, modern day, and the narrator is the oldest girl of seven children. Her father is determined to have his own synagogue and congregation, and the family subsists on the sales of a book on the Kabbalah that he writes and sells through travel and through the mail. What Rachel wants is to be free to choose her own life, and she bucks against the rules over and over again, reading English language books, learning to be a life-guard and wear a swim-suit, eat what is forbidden, and so forth.

The story covers her late teenage years, and I was interested to find out how the author handles the obligatory early wedding with minimal courtship. SPOILERI think the author got her into and out of a disastrous marriage in rather arbitrary ways, without resolving how she would spend her life afterwards But ultimately, I wasn't interested enough in the details to read more than the first third and last third of the book, skimming the rest. ( )

My first foray into the Hassidic Jewish lifestyle. I found it quite fascinating and eye-opening. I thought the characters were well written and I really enjoyed Rachel. She stood up for herself and wanted to live her own life and I applaud that. ( )