Beth, Carol, and Sally were the best of friends. It all seemed to change over night. The Promise is the story of how and why that happened. I found I was forcing myself through parts of this book. It was all very dramatic and often the decisions made by characters left me scratching my head. I felt as if I were reading a soap opera instead of a novel. The characters could somehow seem to be fantastically dramatic without seeming to really feel what was happening around them. There are a lot of hints to what is obvious when it is revealed. Just not for me.

This book kept me guessing until the end what was going on, in the best way possible. I was surprised by the twists and turns the book took, and what “the promise” was about. I enjoyed the friendship and character development of Carol, Sally, and Beth and the trials each woman faced in life and how it shaped them. This is my honest review of an ARC I received on netgalley.

The Promise is a psychological thriller, that centres around a pact made by three friends over 20 years ago. The reader is left to wonder, what happened all those years ago, that is still so negatively impacting them.

The story is told from the view points of Beth, Carol and Matthew. It switches from present day to the past event, slowly revealing the terrible secret the girls have kept.

I thought the story was well written and enjoyed the first half of the book. However I found the second half of the story a let down. Too much hard to believe events, left me disappointed.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC.

What a wonderful book! I thoroughly enjoyed the beautiful writing & the totally intriguing story with all it’s twists & turns. All I can say is read it- you won’t be disappointed.

Beth, Sally and Carol have a dark secret from 30 years ago that they vowed to keep forever. Now that secret is being threatened and the women are in danger of having the truth come to light. Carol is estranged from her former friends and Beth hires a PI to find her and tries to right the wrong from their past.
This was a good book - a little slow to build but worth it in the end! I enjoyed it!
Thank you to Teresa Driscoll, Thomas & Mercer and NetGalley for the ARC of this great book!

Thank you for the advanced copy for a free and unbiased review. I really enjoyed this page turner of a book about 3 schoolfriends and their terrible secret which they had promised never to reveal. The story kept me engaged but had an idea where it was going and I was right. Felt it took too long for the "reveal" and rushed the last few chapters.

Having said the above I will be looking for further books from the Author as I enjoyed her writing style.

This was an interesting read for me. I like the characters of Beth, Sally, Carol and Matt. The author kept me guessing at what the girl’s long ago secret could be. Thanks to Thomas Mercer and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

3 girls attend a school run by nuns, something terrible happens, they come together and decide to never tell what happened. Jump forward several years and they hear the school is due to be demolished, will the secret be revealed?

Absolute page turner, chilling read, believable characters with a solid storyline. Well done and a must read

I really enjoyed this one from Teresa Driscoll. Like her previous book I Am Watching You I felt that it was slow starting but once I got into it I wanted to know the ending. Several twists and turns that keep you guessing until the end. I will definitely keep reading whatever she puts out.
Thanks to NetGalley for the privilege to read this book.

Although I have other works from the author sitting on my bookshelves, this was my first read by Teresa Driscoll and it will not be the last.

Told mainly from Beth's POV (past and present) it took a while for the book to set up. Once the plot is established, Matthew and Carol's present POV get interspersed. With that being said, it took me a while to be engaged into the book. However, I really enjoyed the author's writting style as well as the characters she created. I was surprised by the twists in the end while I did guess some of the others throughout the novel.

I'm not usually a fan of books about friends with secrets from the past because it has been done quite a lot but I really enjoyed The Promise. I thought the idea of secrets kept from a Catholic boarding schools was original.

I will definitely recommend The Promise and will bump the author's previous books on top of my TBR.

Thank you NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for my copy in exchange for an honest review

I just finished reading The Promise by Teresa Driscoll and I loved it. This story is about so much more than a promise and the mystery it holds through the beginning of the book: its about life and friendships. There is so much i want to say but I'm sure I will miss some highlights plus I do not want to give too much of the story away. I find it frustrating in life the way people hold things back from one another thinking that they will hurt people with the truth. The fact is that no matter how painful the truth is to confront head-on it is much easier than living with secrets that consume us. I will admit the first few chapters with the background kind of put me off I want to meat of the story to start but i kept going. What a payoff, this was a wonderful story of love and friendship and the length people will go to for those they love.
At one point in the story we are on the set as a TV show is being filmed and a guest on the show states that he " remembers some one very different" . This stuck out to me because when we look back we do see that different maybe better version of ourselves in the past. I think this anchored this story for even though it is not the main point.
I read in the authors notes that she does "not shy away from difficult themes precisely because we should not pretend that these things could not ever happen." I usually avoid books that relate to real life for that very reason. Stories like this always move me to tears but we can not avoid the reality of life. I read many different genres of literature for this vey reason. I am very glad that I read this book.
This is a story worth reading and would make a great group discussion book. There is so much here that reflects on real life even though it is not based on any actual events.
Beth , Carol and Sally are young girls when they meet and form a bond that lasts a life time. Not many people experience friendships this deep but those who do are truly blessed. Their estranged relation develops as they reach their early 20's when I think many friendships tend to be lost finding love and starting families. The dedication they show toward each other is admirable right up to the very end.
I think that this was a great story and am grateful to the Publisher Thomas & Mercer and NetGalley for the opportunity to read the amazing book.
Please take time and read this story, it will touch your heart.

The Promise is a slow burner and turns into a dark twisty thriller that I enjoyed from beginning to end but not quite as good as her last one.
Beth, Sally and Carol all meet at a convent boarding school and become firm friends, something awful happens and at 14 years old make a pact, little do they know that this will be something all of them struggle to come to terms with the older they become.
The book bounces from present day to days at the boarding school and then the odd chapter from Carol’s thoughts, this works well and I didn’t struggle to remember which timeline I was on which can sometimes happen. This is a slow burner but the revelations towards the end summed up all the characters personalities and why they reacted the way they did to certain things and was at times quite emotional so be warned this does dip into some sensitive topics.
I would like to thank Netgalley and Thomas and Mercer for this ARC I received in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed the last book I read by Teresa Driscoll - The Friend - so was looking forward to this one.

Unfortunately, it fell a bit short of the mark for me.

I spent most of the book feeling disconnected, although I will say that I really loved the final few chapters. I just wish that I'd been hooked in earlier!

The Promise is centred around a secret held by three women from their boarding school days, and the promise they made to each other to not reveal it to anyone. However, as they get notice that their boarding school is shutting down and being redeveloped, they fear that their secret could be revealed.

The question of what exactly this secret is is one that is dragged out far too long, in my opinion. Had it been written in a different way, I wouldn't have necessarily felt this, but the trope of ending almost every chapter on some mention of it, yet not actually giving any extra information to the reader, became frustrating in just a few chapters.

A lot of this comes from having a first person narration where the narrator already knows the answer to the mystery, and isn't the one finding it out. A third person narration, or a different narrator altogether, could have solved this.

Speaking of narrative POVs, I also had issue with Matthew's chapters being in both third person, and present tense. It felt very jarring to me. The tense change between "then" and "now" felt more natural in Beth's chapters because they were first person.

It took me a LONG time to warm to the main character, Beth. As in, until the final few chapters. I found her irritating for a lot of it, and unreleatable. It takes until final few chapters for her to realise “I’m not the victim here”, when it never felt like she was to me.

The final identity reveal <spoiler>of who the father of Carol's baby was</spoiler> was shocking. I questioned whether it was too shocking and out of the blue, or whether I'd just missed clues. Do you ever find yourself wondering that with books?

It's a decent story again, as with The Friend. I just felt that this book lacked polish.

Psychological thrillers are huge right now and I was excited to read the synopsis of this one...but I got bored and wondered when it would end.

It started off intriguing and then got hugely repetitive and I was like...where is the twist so this can just be over? I kept reading other things and it took me forever to finally finish.

I was very disappointed.

Thank you to netgalley for the ARC!

**Now Available — February 7, 2019**
Five thrilling ★★★★★'s

**‘I think I put my hand over her mouth . . .
’‘Don’t say that. Don’t even think that. You <b>wouldn’t</b> have done that."
They sit very still in this room full of blood and sorrow – girls whose pulses burst in their veins and boom inside their ears. Their heads. Somewhere a clock ticks. A bird calls . . .
Three girls. One dead. She looks up at the mirror to see her reflection, face white and terrible – just below it, the line of shells on the blue-painted shelf. She can’t take it in. The shock of the familiar. The shells . . .
She gathered them on holiday just last summer, washed them very carefully at the kitchen sink and polished each until it shone. She remembers the sand between her toes, the smell of the sea and the salt on her lips. She remembers her father and her mother waving from their red-and-white-striped chairs on the beach and she remembers the feeling deep inside her – the sweep of complete happiness.
"Oh my God. What are we going to do? Will I go to hell? Will I burn in hell?"
Her friend’s voice travels as if through water, muted and strange . She looks at the other girl – lips blue – and all of the blood, and she realises that the happiness on the beach was just a trick. A fleeting moment – gone now.
Like their childhoods.
Gone forever now.'

********

The Promise by Teresa Driscoll is a thrilling novel with unexpected twists and tension you can cut with a knife! The opening hooked me right off and I was glued to the pages thereafter. With earnest and sincere characters and an imaginative and fast paced storyline, this is a book that is difficult to put down.
Having read The Friend by this author, I was really anticipating reading this one and I wasn't disappointed in the slightest!
I enjoyed this novel immensely and I highly recommend it!

Thanks to NetGalley, Thomas and Mercer, and Teresa Driscoll for an advanced, uncorrected digital copy for me read and review.

Brilliant plot, excellent main characters that you invest in. I read this book in one sitting and I would highly recommend it.

Had a hard time getting into this one. Description sounded amazing but it just wasn’t. I could not relate to the characters at all. Which to me was sad. I love reading a book that has great character development.

This book was a slow burner for me - it took me a few chapters to get into and I didn't really feel any threat against the characters until roughly halfway in. Most of the mystery centres around the mysterious Carol, and I didn't feel like we got much insight into her character. I did enjoy this book though, and I felt that the blending of past and present was done well

The writing is of quality and the story okay but all in all, the book is too long. The angst about the event in the past.... mentioned frequently but without depth. Do they suffer from PTSD, if so this is not clear and described appropriately- with passion. Guilt? What was Beth ‘guilty’ of ... again no depth. Many threads over elaborated, small mysteries dropped in and all the ‘action’ left until the end and tied up neatly in the last few of many, many chapters..... Sorry this style of novel is not for me.

The Promise wasn't quite what I expected, though I enjoyed it regardless. It's marketed as a thriller, but it feels more like women's fiction with a slight suspense twist. To that end, readers who enjoy domestic/women's fiction aspects in their suspense novels will likely devour The Promise. For me, it was a solid 3.5 star read, rounded up to a 4 here.

At first, going in, I had hoped The Promise would prove the successful execution of the premise of The Lying Game that that book failed to deliver. Three girls who were at boarding school together bonded together by a horrible event, and a secret kept for twenty years. The school being sold for development forces them to confront old demons.

The book follows multiple points of view, namely: Beth who is a mom of two and is the "mum" type in the boarding school friend trio. She drives the majority of the plot, as she myopically focuses on trying to track down estranged friend Carol and solve the problem (of the school grounds being dug up, so we assume there is a buried body). She initiates hiring private investigator Matthew, who is another POV. And then we get chapters that are excerpts from Carol's journal--the estranged friend now living in France. Beth's POVs oscillate between the present and the past, though I'll say the past chapters include narrative/context from "current" Beth. They aren't exactly flashbacks, which I'll talk a bit more about. The third friend who made the "promise" to keep a secret is Sally, who is a bit milquetoast and doesn't get her own POV, but you certainly feel Beth's love for her.

The first half of the book feels like the psychological thriller I expected, and surpassed what The Lying Game was (yay), but close to the break into the third act as dominos kept falling and it became more clear what the secret was, the book veered more sharply into women's fiction. The twists and stakes became very firmly rooted in tropes you'd find in that genre. Not necessarily what I'd pick up normally, but I did care enough about the characters to feel invested in those complications. But I was expecting something more high concept/thrillery--ie: a murder, diabolical teens, etc.

What I really want is the boarding school secrets book of my dreams--teen mean girls! Murder! Secrets that must be reconciled as adults! Now I've read two British thrillers based on that concept and neither worked for me. The issue in Ruth Ware's The Lying Game was that there weren't enough flashbacks from when the girls' were teenagers, and all the twists were told to the reader by adult characters--just wasn't engaging.

The Promise has far more dips into the past at steady intervals, but my block there is that within the "then" chapters, the POV character is still reflecting on the past as their current self--so it feels like telling, rather than immersive storytelling from that time. Since I'm a massive YA reader, I always hope for teen flashbacks to be full dramatization rather than include adult reflection, if that makes sense. I wasn't surprised at all to find out the author is a journalist--the book has that narrative style. (I actually love books in that narrative style though; this isn't a negative, just an observation)

I was genuinely taken by the twists beyond the secret from boarding school (which became clear mid-way through)--I didn't guess one of them, and the other I only guessed because of a slightly confusing "breadcrumb" scene the author inserted in act three. The one I didn't guess, I am definitely kicking myself for not figuring out myself. I'd be curious to go back and reread to see if I can see it in hindsight. The very last part of the book was really intense, and I liked the resolution.

One more tiny quibbly thing: some of the Britishisms in the book drove me bonkers. I'm a well-acclimated British English reader (my dad is British, my mother a proper Anglophile--I grew up saying whinging and bog standard, words I've come to discover are not normal for Americans to use), and yet I was thrown by a few phrases and words that just felt SO fiddly. There was one in particular I had to Google, and the first few results weren't even the word definition! According to Google recce "might" refer to reconnaissance... and I think that was the meaning in the book, but it was a WEIRD usage. And I just searched it again and the dictionary says "British, old fashioned." LOL, indeed. And the word is in the book twice! It's a case where a good copy editor should have suggested a better word/nixed it. It really threw me/annoyed me as a reader.

Highly recommend this for fans of domestic thrillers, or women's fiction with a twist.

Thank you to Thomas & Mercer and NetGalley for providing an ARC for review.