Plain Fear: Forbidden

Plain Fear: Forbidden
Leanna Ellis
400 pages
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Source: NetGalley
★★☆☆☆

You can read the Goodreads summary here.

Rachel is about to give birth but is still reeling from her husband's untimely death, which she blames herself for.  She spends her time on her Amish farm, waiting to give birth, when a stranger appears and tells her he can take her away and has a way he can save her husband.  Desperate, Rachel goes with him but soon realizes that Akiva is a vampire who wants to use her baby for an unfortunate vampire ritual...

I'd been wanting to read this book a long time.  What an interesting and promising concept, I thought, combining the simple Amish lifestyle with the paranormal.  It's obvious that the Amish would afraid of vampires and against them as a lifestyle choice, so I thought it would be interesting to see how an Amish community would deal with vampire outsiders.  What I didn't realize, however, was that Plain Fear: Forbidden is actually second in a series after Plain Fear: Forsaken.  I still do not know how much of these books overlap, but I feel like I would have done better to read Forsaken first.

At least for me, it felt like there was a lot of filler information surrounding Akiva that detracted from the plot I was really interested in: Rachel, the survival of her and her baby, and her relationship with Roc.  Ultimately that's what I was looking for here, an old-fashioned Amish romance where the Amish woman falls in love with the Englisher with a little paranormal thriller thrown in for fun.  I wanted to see Roc save Rachel from the vampires and while some saving did happen, it wasn't enough of the focus of the novel for me.  I'll admit, I skimmed the parts toward the ending that focused on Akiva just to get back to Rachel's story.  I will say, the last couple chapters were fantastic.

And I really did like that part of the book.  If the idea of vampires mixed with the Amish appeals to you at all (and why on earth wouldn't it!?) I recommend this book, but I highly suggest you read Plain Fear: Forsaken first, which incidentally is one sale for Kindle for only $2.99.*  I wish I had and be sure to let me know what you think of it!

*Price is correct at the time the post was written.