Kristie J’s review of Promise Me by Cora Brent
Contemporary Romance published by Cora Brent 10 Apr 14
This is an older book by Cora Brent, but after the great reading experience that was the Gentry Boys bundle and the fact that the heroine of Draw has a sister who is the heroine of Promise Me, I figured this would be a book I’d equally enjoy
Sadly, I couldn’t have been more wrong. For me this one is dreadful and let me list the reasons.
It started off interesting. Promise Talbot, the heroine, is forced to marry a much older man, a man she dreads marrying. She lives in a religion very much like the Warren Jeffs and the FLDS group where young girls are nothing more than slaves to be used by the older men and the younger adult males are cast out. The marriage turns out to be even worse than Promise could have imagined and she is continually assaulted sexually and physically by this monster.
She finally manages to break away and is rescued by Grayson Mercado. Up until he saves her and takes her with him, I was enjoying the book, tough as some of it is. But then it goes into a steady nose dive. He’s a member of the Defiant Motorcycle Club, a group of semi-crooked guys who have no appeal whatsoever. At this point I have to say that I’ve avoided motorcycle gang type books. I never watched Sons of Anarchy and, to me, motorcycle gang/club members are thugs and so NOT the hero type. This book confirmed this kind of book is not for me.
Now for the many reasons this didn’t work:
- First off, the group of them live in run-down trailers outside a city in the desert, all grouped around some seedy bar. Nothing says romantic setting like endless dust in the blistering heat of a desert.
- They ARE thugs. Though nothing specific is given away, the hero only works part time at some tile place but takes mysterious trips every so often, which is implied for illegal purposes. He had spent time in jail and, though he claimed innocence for this particular offense, it’s implied he has done not-so-legal things in the past. Nothing says romantic hero like some kind of bad dude, even though he is very protective of his ‘woman.’ I didn’t mind Gray, in some ways he is appealing, but the fact he walks that line and falls off at times doesn’t do it for me.
- Promise just doesn’t work for me. She’s been brutally beaten and raped, yet after she’s healed physically, she has very few qualms about doing the deed with Gray. In fact, she quite pursues him. I would think a young woman who grew up in almost isolation, one who had been abused during her first experience with sex would have massive reservations. It’s not like she’d read a lot of romances to know that sex can be good. Very, very good.
- The supporting characters added no support for me. The first book in this series had a twenty-year age gap between hero and heroine. He was 40 and her father’s best friend and she was 20. Eew, eew, eew. I don’t mind age differences as a rule, but this was too much, and, though I haven’t read with no plans to read this book, when a heroine is only 20, it’s just yucky and a story I’d see on Maury Povitch or something. The other secondary characters really aren’t fleshed out enough.
The Banging Bunniness of everyone drove me crazy. I don’t know how any of them get anything done, since all they really seem to do is lots and lots of shagging. And they don’t seem to be the least bit discreet about anything. Bunch of Banging Bunnies they are.
Grade: D
Summary:
Promise Talbot needs to escape.
Forced into a polygamous marriage to a sadistic man, she grabs a desperate opportunity to flee his clutches.
And falls into the world of the Defiant Motorcycle Club.Grayson Mercado seethes with the injustice of a long imprisonment for a crime he did not commit. Finally free, he is trying to make a life among his new brothers. Everything changes when a battered young woman approaches him, begging for help.
Promise and Grayson couldn’t be more different.
But the collision of passion and danger will spark a love written in their fates.
No excerpt available.
