Promise Me by Jill Mansell: Book Review

Promise Me is a feel-good story of friendship featuring a kind woman who finds herself caring for an elderly curmudgeon. I loved it!

Acknowledgments:

Thank you to Headline Audio and Netgalley for the Advanced copy of this audiobook. The thoughts and opinions expressed here are my own.

[book-info]

From The Publisher:

One minute Lou is happily employed, with a perfect flat. The next, her home and job have gone. Suddenly she has to start over.

The last thing Lou wants is to move to a tiny Cotswolds village. She certainly doesn’t intend to work for curmudgeonly eighty-year-old Edgar Allsopp. But Edgar is about to make her the kind of promise nobody could ignore. In return, she secretly vows to help him fall in love with life again.

Foxwell is also home to Remy, whose charm and charisma are proving hard to ignore. But Lou hasn’t recovered from the last time she fell for a charmer. She needs a distraction – and luckily one’s about to turn up.

Secrets never stay hidden for long in Foxwell, nor are promises always kept. And no one could guess what lies ahead…

My Thoughts:

I love a story which features a cantankerous character and eighty-year-old Edgar was the perfect complement to Lou’s sweet demeanour. It was a joy to watch the relationship between these two develop into something more than employer and employee. This is my first book by Jill Mansell, but it certainly won’t be my last.

The two meet when Edgar falls in a parking lot. Lou is in town for a couple of days to spend some time with a good friend. Being the caregiver she is, Lou quickly runs to Edgar to assist him. The next thing she knows, she is driving Edgar home and putting away his groceries.

Lou is surprised to see the size of the estate that Edgar is living alone on. It is evident that he needs help to maintain his home and she soon learns that he has gone through a series of caregivers. When he offers Lou the job she explains that she already is caring for a woman in the town she lives in. He continues to pursue her and shortly thereafter her circumstances change. To sweeten the deal, Edgar offers to leave his estate to her upon his death.

The book is filled with a diverse cast of interesting and well-developed characters including a woman from Edgar’s past and her family. I enjoyed the sweet romances in the book and the special bond that Edgar forms with his rescue dog. It was the special relationship that develops between Edgar and Lou that made this book such an enjoyable read.

I listened to the audiobook version of Promise Me which was narrated by Katherine Press. Her performance felt natural and easy to listen to at my usual playback speed of 1.5x. I recommend the audiobook version to all those that enjoy this format.

I recommend this book to those readers that enjoy women’s fiction.

What I Liked:

• The relationship between Lou and Edgar
• The diverse cast of characters
• The sweet romances that develop