I have to be honest: many of the “lesbian fiction” (really more like lesbian romance, but they’re typically labelled lesbian fiction) books I have read don’t have the best writing. I’m not saying that the writing has to be lyrical or award-winning, but most of the lesfic books I’ve read have had writing that was, at least at times, distracting. For instance, this review so far seems to have a distracting writing style, at least to me. This is one of the many reasons I don’t write novels.

That being said, I found Rum Spring a refreshing change. The writing didn’t distract from the story. It didn’t seem clunky, or over-descriptive. It served exactly its purpose, without drawing attention to itself. I really, really appreciated that.

The subject matter was also interesting. Rum Spring is about a romance between an Amish girl and an English (non-Amish) girl. The romance seems to jump suddenly sometimes in terms of how their emotions develop, but the physical romance (not just sex, but dating, etc) seemed to move at a pace that made sense for the story.

I do have some minor complaints, however. [minor spoilers] At some point the couple gets named prom king and queen, even though it’s a same-sex couple, even though they’re not even officially together, even though they were a write-in couple, and most importantly, even though one of them doesn’t even go the school (and spends almost all of her time in the Amish community, so… I’m not even sure how they would know here name). That seemed pretty unbelievable. [end minor spoilers] Also, [vague major spoilers] the ending seemed a little unexpected and neat. [end major spoilers]

Overall, however, I enjoyed Rum Spring. The writing was possibly the best I’ve seen for the modern lesfic genre, and the premise and setting was intriguing. I would recommend this one.