Reviews for Promises to Keep

The average rating for Promises to Keep based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-12-06 00:00:00 Thomas Pacioni This book was a complete waste of time. I should have quit a long time ago, but I won't lie - I did want to know how it ended. I grew very tired of the anti-feminist, traditional gender roles agenda, though. Women who didn't want children ended up pregnant and being happy with babies because of a dying woman's wish. None of them was single by the end. They couldn't be happy unless their lives were on a specific (marriage and babies) track. It became very old. I thought this story was sad and unnecessary. It may have been a true story or based on one anyway, but the story seemed so fake and overdone. Of course they were sad, but who says "mustn't" anymore?? Seriously. There was no main focus, and the point of the story didn't become evident until the middle or so. Just ridiculous.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-09-04 00:00:00 Kevin Kretz Jane Green could be one of my favorite contemporary authors. In fact, I am making that official as of this moment. Her writing embraces the issues and challenges (real and perceived) of relationships and family life, and her discussion of them, through her characters, is often spot on. The description of the self doubting, the aspirations, the juggling of the demands of family and career and self (even when I might not have a lot of empathy for some of the characters) is honest and true to present day. Green's characters are not perfect, but they reveal the courage demanded by this world, and I really care about them. Coincidentally, this novel also dealt with the illness and death of a much beloved sister as the last novel I read (not planned, believe me.) Green's skill as a writer is reflected in sharing the necessity of learning how to live with the enormity of loss, a loss felt every second of every minute of every day. "But you bear it because you have to. What other choice do you have…Life… carries on around the pain, making room for it, absorbing it until it becomes part of the daily fabric, wrapping itself around you and lodging itself in your heart." Those words capture the force behind the characters making the necessary choices for redemption toward the end of the novel, but more often, just going on and being better people.