The Hallowed Ones by Laura Bickle is a YA horror novel set in the Amish community, and it’s one of the most genuinely frightening books I’ve read in a long time. It’s far more scary than some adult horror novels I’ve read, and it doesn’t rely on themes like sexual violence or violence against children to be frightening. It’s also incredibly well-executed and uses the choice of setting (a small Amish community) to amplify the terror in a way that’s both unique and effective.
I want to warn readers that this book is the first book in a duology, and while it doesn’t exactly end on a cliffhanger, you will need to read the second book to get resolution. I’ve got it downloaded and ready to go, but haven’t started it yet.
The novel follows Katie, a young Amish woman who has reached the age when she can go on Rumspringa, a period of time when young Amish adults can go and live in the “outside” world and determine if they want to leave the community or become baptized into the church. Katie is looking forward to experiencing this with her crush, Elijah, a young man that she suspects she will marry when they eventually return to the Amish community. She wants to do things like see a movie, drink a Coca-Cola and read Wonder Woman comics.
When the novel opens Katie is talking to an “outsider” (a non-member of the Amish community) Mrs. Parsall. As they talk they notice a medical helicopter flying too low overhead and watch as it crashes into the field. Katie’s family and their neighbors manage to put out the fire it causes, but the pilot doesn’t survive. Mrs. Parsall tries to reach emergency services on her cellphone, but finds the number to be busy. Later, when she’s leaving, Mrs. Parsall hears on her car radio that a curfew is in effect for the area, and decides to spend the night with Katie’s family.
This is where the choice to have a horror novel set within the Amish community is so excellent because it limits the characters’ (and readers’) information about what’s going on–and frankly not knowing exactly what’s happening is a more effective horror device than seeing the bogeyman right on the page, in my opinion.
Something in the outside world is obviously happening–no 911 service, a mandatory curfew–but because the Amish have no phones, radio or television, they don’t know what that thing is. Some large scale event is taking place, but living without technology and isolated from the rest of the world, Katie and her community have missed the short window in which they might have found out what that event was. Mrs. Parsall acts as their conduit to the outside world, but she’s limited to a cellphone and a car radio, and by the time they realize something very wrong might be happening, communications are limited due to an overtaxed cellular network and a vague emergency broadcast on the radio. One plot hole that did bother me was that Mrs. Parsall apparently didn’t have a smart phone that could use a cellular network to reach the internet. Since she could occasionally make calls out, I would assume she could also occasionally get online, and since the book was written in 2012 it felt weird that she couldn’t access the internet (or didn’t think to) on her cell.
Eventually Katie and Elijah venture outside to look for his two brothers who didn’t return home the night before. In town they find buildings and cars abandoned, some of the cars burned or left on the highway as if their owners suddenly fled. There is no sign of life.
The scariest part of The Hallowed Ones is the unknown–what happened to the outside world and will it invade the Amish community? Eventually we do get details as to what happened, but the build up is slow and terrifying. At one point Katie sees an unfamiliar horse running through their field and stops it. The horse is saddled, but to Katie’s horror, only a severed foot remains in the stirrup.
Because Katie is Amish, she’s unfamiliar with horror movies or their conventions. She and the members of her community aren’t thinking The Walking Dead so much as the idea that God may have forsaken the outside world. They turn inward, rejecting any contact with the outside world and becoming even more conservative in their faith, which adds another layer of fear to the novel.
Katie is afraid of what is happening outside her community, but she’s just as afraid of what her own people are doing out of a sense of terror. When they find a young man unconscious and bleeding outside their fence line, the Elders decide to leave him there to die–a choice Katie feels is morally unconscionable. She rescues the young man and hides him in her barn, aware that if she is found with him she could be banished.
As her community grows more afraid, members become more conservative in their beliefs. Elijah decides to skip Rumspringa and become baptized into the church, expecting Katie to do the same and then marry him immediately. He becomes controlling and frightening to Katie.
So we have lots of layers of horror here that are playing wonderfully into each other. First is the “WTF is going on outside” terror. Contagion? Zombies? War? Invasion of the Lizard People? The only clues we have to this mystery are what Katie is able to glean from her brief, secret trips into town (mostly to find supplies) and from the limited information Mrs. Parsall is able to provide via her cellphone.
Then we have the fear of a community becoming even more insular and reacting to an outside threat in ways that limit the freedoms of its members. Katie is being pressured to marry Elijah quickly (something her parents would not have stood for before, but now pressure her to do). Anyone who goes outside the fence line will be banished. Small infractions that would normally be overlooked are suddenly serious offenses. Katie is fighting the competing tensions of a deadly outside world and a heavily restricted inside one. Katie does not feel safe in either place. And by hiding the young man she found, Alex, Katie risks being thrown out of her community and into a world she knows is plagued by something deadly.
Eventually when the threat from outside infiltrates the Amish community, the Elders react with paranoia (understandable) and judgement (less so) and the community begins to turn on itself. It’s at this point that the horror reaches its apex, and I will warn readers that this book is legit scary and gory. Like way scarier than I expected a YA book to be. I had dreams about it.
Aside from all the creepy AF goodness, I really loved Katie as a character. She’s resourceful and intelligent, and as she watches her community struggle with the events taking place she questions her place in it.
As I mentioned before, Katie sneaks into town for supplies. In one telling scene she raids an abandoned pharmacy for antibiotics and first aid supplies, knowing they will be needed and believing the good of having them will outweigh the transgression of sneaking outside. She also leaves the money she has on the abandoned pharmacy counter, believing that just taking the supplies would be akin to stealing. She navigates a precarious place of adhering the values she was raised with and knowing she needs to be flexible if she and her family are to survive.
There is also a little bit of romantic drama between Katie’s changing feelings for Elijah and her developing ones for Alex, the guy she hid in her barn. If you’re looking for romance, though, this isn’t it and that subplot is pretty small compared to the action/ horror elements.
I really loved The Hallowed Ones. The slow unraveling of terror as an unknown threat encroaches on Katie’s community like a shadow was creepy as fuck, well done, and totally my cup of tea. Add to that the fear of a community cannibalizing itself (not literally–don’t worry) due to fear, and the tension was through the roof. I loved Katie as a main character, and didn’t mind the tiny romance subplot. The only reason I gave this book an A- is that I struggled to believe Mrs. Parsall wouldn’t have the damn internet on her phone.
If you like scary books, definitely check this one out. It’s not for the faint-hearted, thought, so be cautious.
This book is available from:
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well.
Thanks!
I don’t think having internet on your phone in 2012 was as common as you think. I only knew one or two people with smart phones while I was in college, which was 2007-11 (so when the book was being written). Smart phones were transitioning away from being a luxury, but people still had their flip phones or blackberries. Personally, I first owned a smart phone in 2012 (a hand-me-down from my mother), but even then paying for data was too expensive.
Thank you for the great review. This sounds like an awesome book. Added it to my TBR list. My husband who works on the IT field still doesn’t have a smartphone and leather does my father who is 65. So such luddites really exist in 2019 too.
It’s 2019 & I don’t have internet on my phone. Not everyone wants to be hooked up 24/7.
There are LOTS of places in the world where mobile reception is adequate to make a phone call but not to get internet reception.
LOL. I didn’t have a smart phone in 2013. I only got one a few years later when my flip phone eventually died, and I know a lot of other people in the same boat. Heck, my boss still has his same old flip phone. So Mrs. Parsall’s inability to hop on the internet wouldn’t have been an issue for me.
Ooh, I just checked and I bought this book back in 2013. Guess I know what I’m reading next. 🙂 It’s also available on Kindle Unlimited for those who subscribe.
It’s the sign of an excellent review that it makes me want to read a book I would never have picked up left to my own devices. Great job, Elyse. However, I do have to say what everyone else is saying: 2012 was almost eight years ago—a lifetime ago in technological advancements—and on-line access has increased by leaps & bounds since then. If your downgrading of the book from an A to an A- was based on the idea that it should have been “easy” for a cell phone to access the internet in 2012 (especially out in Amish country, where I assume cell phone towers are few and far between), I think you should reassess your grade.
I worked in customer service for one of the Big 4 cell phone providers 2011-12, and we definitely had a sizable non-smartphone-having customer segment. Data was certainly on the rise, but nowhere near the ubiquity of today (and even now, I still don’t have one – I’ll keep my little dumbphone as long as it keeps chugging along lol). But yeah this book sounds amazing, grabbing it on Overdrive now!
I can’t read scary things, but this sounds fascinating and I need to know what’s going on!
There should be a policy for all thriller/horror/mystery reviews to spoil the ending (just for me)
What an interesting twist on the usual Amish mystery/thriller genre! Gonna read this soon.
I love horror, and you sold me on the book at “It’s far more scary than some adult horror novels I’ve read, and it doesn’t rely on themes like sexual violence or violence against children to be frightening.”
One clicked right away.
I’m bummed this violates one of my “principled wallet” criteria. Sounds interesting.
I’m another one who wouldn’t have a mobile phone at all if not for emergency preparedness, so I’m absolutely not wasting money on a fancy phone and data plan. Also, rural connectivity can be an issue (my house is in a dead zone—I have to go nearly a mile before I can get a weak signal), so there are lots of places even a smartphone and the will to use it won’t work.
Hell there are places in cities that still have poor reception, siting in one as I type, I’d have to go into the kitchen to get questionable cell reception and being ouside woudn’t help that much, the coverge here is just pathetic.Yes this does piss me off majorly, I live in a suburb in the Greater Mancheter area, and I had better reption in a small town in rural Devon recently.
This sounds amazing! (And I also didn’t have a smartphone in 2012.)
Wow, thanks for the review, I just finished this in 24 hours!
This sounds fascinating but is definitely not a book for me. Thanks for the comprehensive review, Elyse.
People ooh and ahh over my flip phone; no smart phone here!
I don’t typically read horror but this sounds so good! Thank you for this review. Also I was 26 when the book was published and I didn’t have a smartphone yet. Such a weird time (the last 30 years) because I love my iPhone now.
This book sounds amazing – just put a hold on it at the local library 😉
I’m joining my voice to the chorus of those who didn’t own a smartphone in 2012, and therefore don’t find that plot point unbelievable. Smartphones just weren’t as widespread then, for all kinds of reasons – whether due to the expense, personally held concerns about the technological/social aspect, contentment with the simpler phone options, or lack of coverage. Even today I know several people who have, out of choice, happily kept using their flip phones.
I read this a year or two ago and really enjoyed it. I work at a used bookstore, and I am in charge of the young adult section, so when I read the synopsis and saw that it was teen/Amish/Vampires/Zombies, I decided that if only for giggles I needed to read this on my lunch breaks. Well, joke was on me, because once I got hooked on this story I did not want to put it down and it came home with me a few times so I could keep reading it. Oh my word, SO GOOD!! The suspense! The horror! I loved it! I do have to chime in on the cell phones: I didn’t have a smart phone until around 2012-ish, and I know quite a few middle aged women who still don’t, so the lack of smart phone thing isn’t far fetched at all, especially when this book was published.
So glad you felt the same way I did about this book. It’s one of my absolute favorites.
This sounds great! Just a note: if the book came out in 2012, then there’s a high likelihood that it was written years before that, 2010 at the earliest, due to publishing schedules! So it makes sense that a character may not have a phone with access to the internet at that time.
But thanks for this amazing review, I will definitely be checking this out!