A Promise Of Forever

Tallgrass Series, Book #4

By Marilyn Pappano

ISBN # 9781455561568

Author Website: http://www.marilyn-pappano.com/index.html

 

Brought to you by OBS Reviewer jerjen

Review:

Avi Grant has returned home for her one month long furlough from Afghanistan.  She is there to visit her parents and to rest and relax before she starts her new assignment, stateside.  She also plans to pay her respects to her commanding officer’s wife, Patricia.  Both her commander, George, and his wife have been like second parents to her and she loves them both and greatly mourns the loss of George from her life.  She knows it will be painful to see his wife but she also hopes it will be healing for them both.  On her first visit to see  Patricia, Avi meets her son, Ben.

Ben is struggling with the fact that his mother left her family and started a whole new life with George.  It was only after his death that Ben reconnected with Patricia but it is a relationship that is very strained, to say the least.  When he meets Avi and sees the love she has for both his mother and George, he is surprised and curious about the relationship between them and Avi.  He begins to see George in a different light, and although the hurt of his mother’s abandonment is still there, he feels now he is beginning to understand the deep love that they had for each other.

Avi and Ben feel an instant connection with each other.  Avi is hoping to find the person that she is meant to be with and she longs for a lifelong love, family and children.  The more time she spends with Ben, the more she thinks he could be the one.  But she knows that Ben has strong ties to Tulsa and he would never move away from his sisters and his job as a surgeon.  Ben realizes what has been missing from his life, someone to share special occasions with as well as daily triumphs and sorrows.  He thinks that Avi is special and that she makes his life much  fuller and richer.  But he knows that Avi still has eight years left before she can retire from the military and she will only be in Tulsa for a month.  He knows that he will never abandon his sisters like his mother did so long ago.  Neither are willing to change their life and follow the other and there is no compromise that can be reached.  So their relationship is doomed to be only one month.

I fell in love with these characters, the story line and the entire book.  The characters are well rounded, realistic and three dimensional.   I feel like they are people I really know and care about rather than characters in a book.  Avi and Ben have both been hurt in the past and the hurt is hard to let go of.  Avi has lost so many of the people that she has loved, both family and fellow soldiers and she will not be able to handle losing someone else she cares about.  Ben has never totally forgiven his mother for walking out on her family.  He still blames her for his father’s death, feeling like he died with a broken heart.  Although his sisters have reconciled and formed a new relationship with Patricia, Ben just cannot seem to let his guard down and forgive her.   The supporting characters are also well developed and an important part of the story.  They are a close knit community of military wives who have all lost so much.  But they stand behind each other and support each other unconditionally.  The characters are all very easy to like and you cannot help but to care what happens to them.

The writing style flows smoothly and it is a very well written book. The story is an emotional story of love, forgiveness and second chances.  It’s a story of forgiving others as well as having the courage to follow your dream.  It is a story of remembering those you have lost but not allowing those losses to control your life.  The characters and the story line are heart wrenching and heartwarming at the same time.  I do not think this an easy thing to do as an author but Marilyn Pappano does an excellent job of blending the two together.   Although this is the fourth book in the series, I feel it can be read as a stand alone.  The author gave enough of a back story on the characters that I knew who was who and what was going on but not so much as to become repetitive.

I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading well written women’s fiction.  If I could I would give this book more than five stars, that is how much I enjoyed it.  I have also read the third book in the series and I am looking forward to reading the first two books.  I want to spend more time with all of the characters and learn more about each of their stories.  I am definitely a fan of Marilyn Pappano and I think you will be too.

 

*OBS would like to thank NetGalley for supplying a free copy of this title in exchange for an honest review*