The Promise

By: Teresa Driscoll

Narrated by: Esther Wane, Billie Fulford-Brown, Steve West

Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's summary

The chilling new psychological thriller from the #1 bestselling author of I Am Watching You.

It was their darkest secret. Three schoolgirls made a promise - to take the horrible truth of what they did to the grave.

Thirty years later, Beth and Sally have tried to put the trauma behind them. Though Carol has distanced herself from her former friends, the three are adamant that the truth must never come to light, even if the memory still haunts them.

But when some shocking news threatens to unearth their dark secret, Beth enlists the help of private investigator Matthew Hill to help her and Sally reconnect with estranged Carol ­- before the terrible act they committed as teenagers is revealed.

Beth wishes she could take back the vow they made.

But somebody is watching and will stop at nothing to ensure the secret stays buried. Now, with her beloved family in peril, can Beth still keep the promise?

©2019 Teresa Driscoll (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Critic reviews

“Expertly handled noir…” (Fiona Barton, Sunday Times and New York Times best-selling author of The Widow)

“Gripping and well written with warm, realistic characters who will haunt you long after you’ve reached the dramatic end.” (Jane Corry, Sunday Times best-selling author of My Husband’s Wife)

Interesting listen with good plots

I liked the book, I think in terms of subject matter and the ability to grasp the issues and challenges of a person and the emotions that go with it, this was a very good listen with a very good narrator. However, there was an unnecessary dramatic build up to the secret promise. Honestly It could have been revealed early on and then the after effects played out through out the story. The flaw was in the writers’ thought process that the center of the book was a promise when it really was the development of the characters surrounding the effects of the promise. It was still a very good book.

Not what it claimed to be

The only suspense in this book was the waiting for the thrilling and exciting parts.

by chapter 6 I'm completely lost

it sounds like it could be a good book.... but there are so many characters being introduced without any real foundation of knowing who they are.. changing from then to now from then to now timelines.... I feel like I walked into a conversation of people I barely know talking about people I never met about something that they're not cooling me in on.

Performance great. Story was good!

The performance and narration was spot on. Very good! The story was a bit hard to follow at times and I had hard time with characters and following the back and forth. But worth the read/listen.

Excellent!

The Promise has a sad, but surprising twist that I hadn't even considered until it was revealed. Excellent novel!

I promise she gets to the story!

Whoa! This was extremely difficult for me to stick with. It finished okay but the first good half of the book lead up to this super, ultra, life altering promise among a group of girls. You have no clue why and aren't given much more than bread crumbs like Hansel and Gretel. It was grueling trying to piece together and it took too long to set the story. Once it began to roll it became interesting but not riveting and though the story did have some twists, I never was on the edge of my seat so to speak and much could be anticipated ahead of time. Myself, I would personally have picked another book given the chance knowing this information. Way too many other good books out there!

Surprising twists

Really enjoyed this one and how it all came together. Several twists toward the end.

Not advisable for parents grieving loss of a child

I found the story captivating with many twists. I kept guessing wrong; a good thing. Although it was not upsetting for me, women or men who have lost a fetus or child may find this story further upsetting.

It's was okay

Ⓐⓤⓓⓘⓞⓑⓞⓞⓚ Ⓡⓔⓥⓘⓔⓦ

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑷𝒓𝒐𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒆
𝙱𝚢: Teresa Driscoll / @tkdriscoll_author
𝙽𝚊𝚛𝚛𝚊𝚝𝚘𝚛𝚜: @esthermwane , @billiefb_voiceover , Steve West
𝙶𝚎𝚗𝚛𝚎: Thriller, Mystery, Suspense
𝙿𝚞𝚋𝚕𝚒𝚜𝚑𝚎𝚛: Thomas Mercer (Brilliance Audio)
𝙿𝚞𝚋𝚕𝚒𝚜𝚑𝚎𝚍 𝙾𝚗: February 7th 2019
@goodreads 𝚂𝚌𝚘𝚛𝚎: 4.00
𝙼𝚢 𝚂𝚌𝚘𝚛𝚎: 👶👶👶 / 5 Babies

𝑰𝒕 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒊𝒓 𝒅𝒂𝒓𝒌𝒆𝒔𝒕 𝒔𝒆𝒄𝒓𝒆𝒕. 𝑻𝒉𝒓𝒆𝒆 𝒔𝒄𝒉𝒐𝒐𝒍𝒈𝒊𝒓𝒍𝒔 𝒎𝒂𝒅𝒆 𝒂 𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒆 – 𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒂𝒌𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒉𝒐𝒓𝒓𝒊𝒃𝒍𝒆 𝒕𝒓𝒖𝒕𝒉 𝒐𝒇 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒚 𝒅𝒊𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒈𝒓𝒂𝒗𝒆.

Thirty years later, Beth and Sally have tried to put the trauma behind them. Though Carol has distanced herself from her former friends, the three are adamant that the truth must never come to light, even if the memory still haunts them.

But when some shocking news threatens to unearth their dark secret, Beth enlists the help of private investigator Matthew Hill to help reconnect the friends with estranged Carol ­– before the terrible act they committed as teenagers is revealed.

But somebody is watching and will stop at nothing to ensure the secret stays buried.

My Thoughts

Firstly I'd like to say that inside this book there are a lot of areas that involve mental illness. Discussing from eating disorders, alcoholism, depression, drug addiction, etc. I enjoy reading books that cover mental illness so thank you Teresa for sharing this with us.

I did however feel that the book was overloaded. There were many situations covering the entire novel and a good many story lines that I found it troubling to follow. It was difficult to keep track of who was dealing with what and it left me feeling some characters stories were being rushed due to everything ending so fast. Other than that, this was a good listen and had many interesting parts.

Good plot but a bit to slow for me.

Good plot but a bit to slow for me. I struggled a bit to keep picking up and finishing

Secrets, lies, twists and turns but gritty subject

I am a big fan of Teresa Driscoll - particularly "I am Watching You" and found "The Friend" very good if s little implausible at the end. "The Promise" was very well written, with lots of plot twists and surprises along the way, some more predictable than others.
I was not keen on Carol, as she seemed a little of an unconvincing character and also was not that onboard for how Beth's story developed but it was more the subject matter and medical details I was not really a fan of as just not really my thing. Not that it was terribly gory but just a sensitive subject and without spoiling the story, there was just quite a lot of "women's stuff" going on which I found hard to listen to and think if I had known I might have given it a miss as I love a good entertaining, escapist thriller and I found it rather grim in places.
Narration was great for Beth's character I am guessing that was Esther Wane and despite a few mispronunciations it was a great read, Carol's character was just not that likeable especially her strange hatred of Crows (which I adore) so hard to like the narrator but I did think she did a good job ... unlike Steve West who gave me the creeps with the Matthew character who seemed like he had done nothing to deserve coming across as so weird and unattractive.
So to sum up, great tightly woven plot, suspense, intrigue and twists, some unpleasant topics, no actual animal cruelty but murderous intentions towards corvoids, story keeps you guessing but would have preferred less medical descriptions dreariness, distress and sadness as felt quite bleak and worn out after reading it, unlike the previous two.
Sadly the next Teresa Driscoll "I Will Make You Pay" which is set in the world of journalism and sounded a lot more unbeat than this one (though ISteve West is again playing the main part) was another disappointment despite always excellent Elizabeth Knowelden giving another great read.
So to rate Teresa Driscoll's books in order of preference would be sadly in order of first "I am watching you" best to the latest one "I will make you pay" worst. I will look out for book number 5 and hope for a return to previous form.

Weak characters and plot

Do women have to be so weak and feeble? All characters were 2D and cliched. Plot was too drawn out and, such twists as there were, were obvious. Narrators were flat and monotonous, particularly the male voice.

This is a domestic drama, not a thriller per se.

I was rather bored halfway through and really found the male actor hilarious because he was trying to sound like Bruce Wayne. It was a fine story, but not a thriller as I'd thought.

Good Story

I was sceptical at first as I've returned quite a few books recently. Unfortunately, too many churned out, badly written boring books on the market. I'd like to add, in no way am I knocking Audio, Audio is brilliant, it's the percentage of awful material it has to work with that's the problem. I'm happy to report, this book, is worth a listen. Narration is good, the story line builds nicely and the ending is ok. wasn't sure it was going to hold my attention until 3 or 4 chapters in but it did. I definitely recommend this book.

Gripping book with plots I couldn’t foresee!

I would definitely recommend this book, the performances were excellent and didn’t distract from the story. The performances greatly enhanced the story. It was a definite feeling of a page turner for me. I didn’t see a lot of the things that happened coming. Most books you can guess but the author did a great job here of not giving too much away.

be careful what you agree to

three school friends make a promise to never reveal what they know. But one of them has already spoken, breaking the vow. When developers take over their old convent school they know its only a matter of time.

Promising

3 girls, a deadly secret held since their school days...now its threatening to be revealed...

I have listened to quite a lot of thrillers now, I am by no means an expert...but its now taking more to impress me.

The Promise was only okay not brilliant, that being said I was excited to find out what happened even if I did guess quite a lot of it early on.
It did has an interesting narration style, each chapter narrated by a different character which a separate narrator...this was extra surprising when a male narrator chipped in what seemed like halfway through the book.
This was a nice easy listen, and entertaining few hours...but nothing spectacular.

A good listen

I enjoyed this book, not a 5⭐️ , but definitely worth a listen, Matthew’s narrator was a disappointment, but fortunately he didn’t have too big a part. I did guess most of the ‘reveals’ but on the whole a good listen

Not worth your time

Narrators are so annoying. Sounds like cheap American theme park announcements in parts and whiny in others.
Struggled to feel anything towards any of the characters.
The story itself could have been written on 2 pages. The rest was pointless moaning pretending to be nostalgic/sad/loving/angry.

average and easy listening

it was okay, certainly not gripping and no dramatic twists or turns anywhere in the book. bumbled along slowly, picked up slightly at the end and then finishes. Vanilla, if you like that kind of thing.