Forbidden Falls is the 8th novel in the Virgin River series and in the previous novel it was mentioned that the town church, which hadn’t been used for many years, was placed up for sale on eBay. Town resident Hope McRae hopes that someone will see the potential in it and attempt to get it up and running again, as a place for people in the small town to come together – even if it isn’t necessarily to worship. The only place residents really meet up is Jack’s bar and Hope is sure that there are other options available in the church, if only someone would see that.

Noah Kincaid is a reverend without a flock, as such. A widower, he buys the church and decides that it might be just the sort of project he has been looking for. Noah was the product of a televangelist and he resisted the call of religion for a long time, doing physical work to put himself through college. But he couldn’t deny it forever and now he’s determined to make a go of it in Virgin River. Before he can do anything though, he needs to get the building fixed up and he needs an assistant – an assistant who can help with the physical work and really help make the effort to transform the church. He’s a bit disheartened when his advertising leads to only 3 applicants, one of whom is unable to do the sort of work he requires, one of whom is a judgemental overzealous Christian…. and Ellie Baldwin.

Ellie is a gorgeous mid-twenties former exotic dancer who has lost custody of her two adored children to her ex-husband, even though he isn’t their father. He convinced a conservative judge that Ellie’s job was unsuitable and that he was by far the better custody option, even though he doesn’t particularly care for them – it’s all part of his plan to force Ellie to return to him and their marriage. Ellie has so many days to get herself a proper, respectable job and gain back the court’s respect in order to have custody of her two children returned to her. Despite the fact that she’s a young mother, Ellie has always worked, in a variety of jobs and she sees no problem in the sort of tasks that Noah lays out that the church needs doing. She’s done plenty of decent labour before.

Although reluctant to hire her at first, Noah sees that Ellie desperately needs this job and for all the right reasons. She’s a good mother, a fantastic mother who loves her kids and took the job dancing in order to earn a bit more money so that their lives together would be better. She’s a girl who’s had life the hard way – no mother, raised by her grandmother with barely enough to get by, two children at a young age that she brought up firstly with the help of her grandmother, and then alone. Her ex-husband at first looked like a lifeline – polite, respectful, happy about her kids. That all changed when they married and when Ellie left him, he turned his hand to making her miserable.

Two different people fixing up a church that couldn’t be more different – a religious pastor and a former exotic dancer. But Noah is more progressive than most and they’ll discover that they have more in common than they ever could’ve imagined. And even though Ellie, after bad experiences, has sworn off all men forever, she might have just found the one exception.

I’ve really been loving the last few books I’ve read from this series and this one was no exception. Although a bit of the religion put me off in the beginning, it actually became less a part of the book as it went on which was good for me. I think that Ellie just might be my favourite heroine of this entire series – I really enjoyed how she was portrayed by Carr. She dresses provocatively, all low cut tight tops and boobs on show, because she knows that she has a nice body and she doesn’t see anything wrong with showing that. She has long, big hair and funky nailpolish and actually acts like someone in their twenties might, rather than a 25yo heroine who dresses and acts 55. She was fun and unapologetic for the choices she had made in her life – she did the best she could by her children. They were always well looked after and she earned enough money to ensure they had all they needed. But more importantly she provided all they needed emotionally and what distressed her the most was that she knew her ex-husband was not doing that. He wasn’t interested in them one particular way or another, they were just a tool for him to get what he wanted.

The attraction between Noah and Ellie was immediate on Noah’s side but took a little while on Ellie’s. She’d had a rough few years and although she obviously liked Noah and thought he was wonderful (which he was!) she was obviously reluctant to allow herself to feel anymore. Noah however, was tempted from the beginning and that was fun to read. We were with his part of the narrative for most of the book which was great – I like romance books that give us the point of view of the male just for something a little different, especially if the male is the one that’s really interested!

This is one book that I wish I owned – I’ve borrowed most of the Virgin River series from the library and this was one that I could really see myself re-reading again and again. It was the sort of synopsis that you read and think to yourself ‘this will either be terrible or it will really work’ – and it really worked. Might be my favourite of the series.