Hannah's Promise [Paperback]

Ms. Porter has a wonderful way with words. This tale of revenge builds into an exquisite love story that makes you laugh at times, cry at others, and makes you root for the heroine, Hannah Lawless. You won't be disappointed! It is a lovely romance. It made me cry several different times. The secondary characters are gems, too!

From the back cover:

When she encounters a mysterious stranger will she be able to keep Hannah's promise?

When Hannah Lawless comes home to her parents' ranch to find her mother and father have been brutally murdered, she vows to find the killers. Travelling to Boston to stay with the high-society family that disowned her mother, Catherine Wilton-Humes, when she married renegade J.C. Lawless, Hannah realizes that she will need the help of handsome Slade Garrett to ind the answers to her questions.

As Hannah teams up with Slade, she realizes she is losing her heart to him. But what if he had something to do with the murders? His name was scrawled on the scrap of Wilton-Humes stationery she found at the ranch. And as Hannah comes closer to uncovering the secrets, will she find her new love is her greatest enemy?

And my review:

I absolutely loved Sara's Bounty by Cheryl Anne Porter, so I eagerly sought out her backlist. Now I'm wondering if that was a mistake, as what I've read so far (To Make a Marriage and HANNAH'S PROMISE) has been disappointing.

HANNAH'S PROMISE should have been a five-star novel. It had all the right elements: a well-researched historical background (that never read like a textbook), strong characters, believeable motivations, and an interesting plot. Even if the "couple falls in love while each trying to use one another" is an oldie, it's a goodie, and a good author can breathe life into a recycled plot. I thought for sure Cheryl Anne Porter was that author.

But nothing seemed to come together properly. First off, I felt that Hannah jumped to conclusions. She finds a guy's name on a scrap of paper and concludes that he's a murderer? For all she knew, that letter (the rest of it was burned away) could have been a warning to her parents, written by the hero! I think she decided the hero's guilt just a little too quickly.

The author continuously made reference to some wrong the heroine's family had commited against the hero's family. However, the reader doesn't get to know what it is for a loooong time. Rather than feeling "hooked", instead I felt annoyed at being kept in the dark. It was hard to feel that Slade was justified in hating Hannah so much, and in using her to his own ends, when we don't know what his motivations are.

And the mystery/intrigue storyline never really seems to take off, either. There was no urgency to the plot. You would think a story of murder, revenge, and old grudges would be gripping, but it wasn't. Suspects were introduced and then quickly ignored as they story picked up on a new subplot. There were too many things going on, and I felt as if the author kept dropping her story threads to pick up new ones without ever really resolving anything or building momentum with the story. It was as if there was just too much going on for the author to really develop anything properly. All that was left was a tangled mess of story threads, and nothing really came together to make a satifying whole.

I never really connected with the characters (they just rubbed me the wrong way) and never felt the chemistry between them either. I got that they didn't like and distrusted one another; I never felt the supposed attraction between them. I guess because neither of them felt very likeable to me, I didn't really care if they got together or not.

I have other books by Cheryl Anne Porter on my to be read bookshelf, so I will be giving her another try. I just hope that SARA'S BOUNTY wasn't just a fluke, and that her other books will be better. I'm afraid I can't recommend HANNAH'S PROMISE.

(Note: this is the first book in the LAWLESS WOMEN series. The other two are Jacey's Reckless Heart (Lawless Women) and Seasons of Glory if you are interested in having the complete series.)

› Go to Amazon U.S. to see both reviews  3.5 out of 5 stars