Buggy-ing out: Tame Amish romance novel with ‘some touching’ and no sex too hot for church elders
nypost.comTapestry of Love” (literally — in a notebook) after beginning her writing career at an Amish newspaper.The second novel in her “New Directions” romance series chronicles the romance between two traditional Amish youngsters in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and has sold close to a million copies, the Daily Mail reported Saturday.But Byler has gotten blowback from some community elders who claim the success of her tome is fueling sexual abuse, she told the outlet.“They are very tame books,” Byler said, dismissing comparisons to the sadomasochistic “Fifty Shades of Grey” novels, which shocked and titillated readers just over a decade ago.“There’s nothing unclean in them.
There is some touching, my publisher said it would have to be discreet, and a little bit of a kiss,” she said, adding there was no sex in the book.Byler began newspaper reporting when her husband went bankrupt and later transitioned to publishing books for children before writing about the amorous side of Amish culture, where premarital sex — not to mention divorce, cars, electricity and cellphones — are verboten.Her books have increasingly become popular in the conservative US Bible Belt and other Christian communities, and Byler said she has earned a lifetime of money for her and her husband.However, she claims she is being unfairly blamed for recent publicized cases of sex abuse in the Amish community.“In the last 10 years or so, romance novels have become wrong in the community,” Byler told the Daily Mail.
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