Wedding Day

Wedding Day
Enjoy EVERY moment in your wedding gown. You can't stay in it forever...SO UNFAIR!!!!

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Promise Not To Tell by Jennifer McMahon

Several Saturdays ago, my husband and I hit a book sale fundraiser for CASA. There have been some cuts in the money given to help foster children, and CASA is stepping in and doing fund raisers in order to supply clothing and other needs for these children. It was obviously a great cause and a great opportunity to pick up some awesome books. I was pretty excited to find out that they had so many books donated that they are going to do another fund raiser to sell off the rest! YAY!

One of the books I picked up was Promise Not to Tell by Jennifer McMahon. I thought I'd share it with you. :)

Summary (from the back cover): Forty-one-year-old school nurse Kate Cypher has returned home to rural Vermont to care for her mother who's afflicted with Alzheimer's. On the night she arrives, a young girl is murdered--a horrific crime that eerily mirrors another from Kate's childhood. Three decades earlier, her dirt-poor friend Del--shunned and derided by classmates as "Potato Girl" --was brutally slain. Del's killer was never found, while the victim has since achieved immortality in local legends and ghost stories. Now, as this new murder investigation draws Kate irresistibly in, her past and present collide in terrifying, unexpected ways. Because nothing is quite what it seems...and the grim specters of her youth are far from forgotten.

My Review:

Promise not to tell really pulled me in from the beginning. I have a love for stories that involve some coming-of-age aspects. The reader is taken back and forth in time with Kate Cypher as an adult returning home to make some difficult decisions regarding her mother and whose arrival has also coincided with a murder that is eerily similar to the murder of her childhood friend, Del.

I particularly enjoyed reading the story from young Kate's point of view. I still find myself magically drawn in when a story involves children. The friendship between outcast Del and new-girl Kate is odd at times as Del is seriously a bit of a character. Kate desperately wants to belong in her new school, but really she is a bit of an outcast herself as she lives on a commune and is pretty far off from living a normal life like the other students at their school. Del and Kate are away-from-school friends who live an adventure when they play together.

Kate as an adult her own set of challenges from the past, and has chosen to live a life-time away from the commune she spent the latter part of her childhood. She has a flood of memories as she tries to piece together what happened to her friend Del and if it is related to the murder of the young girl in the present.

I enjoyed the book a great deal and read it over a weekend. I was intrigued as the story unfolded. It also left me really wanting to know what would become of Kate in the future. There was definitely quite a bit of adult subject matter, but it was factual rather than explicit, but the facts though fictional are still disturbing.

2 comments:

Pam said...

This sounds like a good book. Although I am in the mood for something upbeat right now, I'll have to check out this one later!

Bingo said...

Nice review....makes me want to read it...only problem is there are only so many hours in a day! But thanks for the review!