Promises to Keep by Ann Tatlock (a Bethany House Publishing Blogger Review)

**Bethany House Publishers provided me a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for posting a review with my honest (good or bad) opinion of it.**

Promises to Keep is a cute-on-the-surface story.  It’s a fast read.  Another reviewer thought the book was sad and depressing. I actually found the idea of Tillie quite amusing. (she's much like the girlfriend George Kastanza (from "Sienfield") had at one point who refused to let him break up with her).

Unfortunately, for mystery seekers, the plot is completely predictable from start to finish. And, I found Ms. Patchett's naive impression of 1960s race relations a joke. She tried a bit to hard to make Roz a likeable character by making her colorblind about a decade and a half too early for the effort to be anywhere close to believable. The culture was entirely too broken at that time for a single incidence of the "n word" to show up in the story. Further, in the early 1960s my black grandparents certainly would not have encouraged a friendship with a white child or allowed me to spend the night with a white family (no matter how well-meaning).

Actually, I was going to write I don't even know why Roz's friend Mara had to be black, but I really don't know what other fathers-and-daughters-with-secrets plot would really work for Roz to have a companion with whom to keep her promises.

A few spoilers:

Roz's secret is that she knows her father is stalking her mother, and she even “innocently” helps him as he plans to destroy her mother, all the while pretending ignorance as she overlooks the evilness that oozes from his character. (I guess that makes her crazy-obsessive-alcoholic-father-blind as well as colorblind). Hmmm... I'm not sure how believable that whole interaction is…

Mara's secret is that she has a white father she dreams of having a relationship with. She listens to his radio shows, which he signs off every time with "Good night, Bernice." (Mara's first name is Bernice). Interestingly, her white father's white family doesn't have a clue about is previous relationship with her black mother or that Mara even exists. Hmmm... Seriously???  If my husband ended his radio shows with "Good night, Bernice" and MY name wasn't Bernice, there'd definitely be a problem...

Meanwhile, it's no surprise that Tillie's gonna die in the house she and her husband built.

Another reviewer referenced this as a Christian book. Tillie vaguely mentions "the Father" a handful of times, and Roz has a bit of an ah-ha at the end. But otherwise, I don't consider this book Christian fiction in the least.