Tender Mercies by Eli Easton ~ Audio Review

Title: Tender Mercies

Series: Men of Lancaster County 02

Author: Eli Easton

Narrator: Will Tulin

Genre: Contemporary

Length: 8 hrs, 28 mins

Publisher: Dreamspinner Press (26th January 2018)

Heat Level: Low

Heart Rating: 💖💖💖💖 3.5 Hearts

Blurb: Eddie Graber’s dream of a sanctuary for rescued farm animals was about to come true when his partner backed out at the last minute. Now Eddie risks losing the 25-acre property in Lancaster County – and all the hopes he held for it – before the project even gets off the ground. He needs help, he needs money, but most importantly, he needs to rediscover the belief in a higher purpose that brought him here in the first place.

Samuel Miller worked hard to fit into his Amish community despite his clubfoot. But when his father learns Samuel is gay, he is whipped and shunned. With just a few hundred dollars to his name, Samuel responds to an ad for a farmhand and finds himself employed by a city guy who has strange ideas about animals, no clue how to run his small farm, and a gentle heart.

Samuel isn’t the only lost soul to serendipitously find his way to Meadow Lake Farm. There’s Fred and Ginger, two cows who’d been living in a garage, a gang of sheep, and a little black pig named Benny who might be the key to life, love, money – and even a happily ever after for two castoffs.

Product Link: Audible US | Audible UK | Amazon US | Amazon UK

Reviewer: Prime

Review: Tender Mercies is the second book in Eli Easton’s Men of Lancaster County series. You don’t need to have read the first book to understand and there is only a brief meet up with the MCs of the first book, so if you’re like me and didn’t read the first book you’re good to go regardless.

Eli Easton is one of my favorite authors on the Dreamspinner Press call sheet. She writes wonderfully sweet romances that I just get lost in. However, for me, something fell short in this story. The plot left me feeling a little “meh” – I’ll get to specifics in a second. The narration by Wil Tulin, a first time I’ve heard this narrator, was also mediocre, but I’m partly convinced that it is the book rather than the voice.

Tender Mercies is the story of Eddie Garber and Samuel Miller. Eddie is a thirty-year-old, soft-hearted man with a lot of lofty ideas. Just the fact that he brought a farm for rescued farm animals with basically no idea of how he was going make it work. He needs help and places an ad in a paper for a farmhand. Who he gets is 19-year-old Samuel Miller – Samuel’s story is heart breaking. He’s an Amish man who was beaten and whipped by his father before being shunned by his community. He has happy day dreams to escape his horrid reality where there was an Amish community that would openly accept gay men and all same sex couples to adopt orphans. At first Eddie sees Samuel as someone he must save after finding out just how bad things are for Samuel and things just go from there.

One truly funny moment is where Eddie must explain to Samuel, in a way Samuel can understand, that Eddie is a vegan and doesn’t even want Samuel to milk the rescue cow. It’s very endearing for Samuel’s character, but really did not help me to connect with Eddie. And that, is the main issue I had with this book.

Eddie was an impossible character for me. I really had to suspend my disbelief for this one as soon as I started. The fact Eddie went over half a million dollars into debt with the mortgage on the farm with no plan of how he was going to run a rescue as well as manage to keep on earning money was hard to believe. Eddie does admit that he is all heart and no practicality, well not so specifically, but it didn’t really help me. From there I was never able to really connect with the guy.

Fans of Eli Easton will at least enjoy this audio. In fact, looking at other reviews I feel that my opinion is in the minority. People that have read other books featuring Amish characters (such as Andrew Grey’s Love Means… No Shame, and Love Means… No Fear) will probably enjoy this too. However, once more, my opinion is that Eddie’s character is not as strong as those in similar books.