The Promise of Tomorrow

By: Mary Ellen Taylor

Narrator: Cortney Wright

Brilliance Audio

ISBN: 978-1662517822

Publisher: Montlake

Publication Date: 06/01/2024 Format: Other

My Rating: 4 Stars (ARC)

JUNE 2024 MUST-READ BOOKS

From the author of The Brighter the Light comes the moving story about one woman’s reason for leaving home and the love that brings her back.

When Olympia leaves her small Virginia town, she doesn’t expect to look back, much less ever come home. But after a year on the road, her sister’s engagement pulls Olympia into everything she left behind: her family, her husband, and the grief she’s been trying to forget.

She’s determined to stay a few days, maybe a week―just enough time to visit gravestones and sign off on the divorce her husband, Spencer, asked for. But he’s reeling from their shared loss, as well as complications with his aging parents, leaving his heart just as fragile as Olympia’s. The more time they spend in each other’s orbit, the less sure they are they’ll be able to walk away for good.

As family secrets come to light and family bonds stretch to the breaking point, Olympia must decide where she’s going next and where she belongs. She’s used to coping with life’s complications alone, but maybe the best way to heal is together.

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My Review

Master storyteller Mary Ellen Taylor (favorite author) returns following When the Rain Ends with her latest richly woven novel, THE PROMISE OF TOMORROW. In the author's signature style, an emotionally moving story of loss, grief, love, secrets, second chances, and the meaning of home and family.

About...

Blacksburg, Virginia

Olympia has been running away from home for the last year with promises of freedom, self-discovery, and happiness in her van via a long winding road across the western US—from Missouri, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and Montana. She wanted to complete her deceased mom's bucket list.

Now, she was back in her old Virginia stomping grounds.

She planned on a quick trip, in and out, with no drama.

~Sign the divorce papers

~Visit the graves of her mother and daughter

~and return to the road.

She was back for her sister's engagement party with her fiance, Brad, a lawyer. She did not anticipate seeing her estranged husband, Spencer.

But things do not always work out as planned.

Told from POVs: Olympia and Spencer we get both their perspectives. They have dealt with grief and loss with the death of their daughter, her loss of mom, and now his father's mental decline and diagnosis of Alzheimer's. Spencer has given up his spot on the golf circuit to take care of the family business.

He never understood why Olympia left. On the other hand, she had hoped Spencer would follow her.

From fractured family and sibling relationships, in-laws, family dynamics, and loss, will the couple find their way back to one another?

Love is where you left it.

My thoughts...

THE PROMISE OF TOMORROW explores heavy topics of death, tragedy, grief, loss, and love in all forms on the road to healing and second chances. The author has a way with words, a Southern storyteller that will draw you into these families with a bit of fun and updates from her traveling diary @ThePizzaTraveler.

While not my author's favorite book, a compelling, thought-provoking, and beautifully written story. Taylor is always an auto-read, and I look forward to seeing what comes next. I am not a big romance fan; however, I am a big fan of the author's - contemporary (Mary Ellen Taylor) and thrillers (Mary Burton).

Thanks to Montlake and NetGalley for a gifted, advanced reading copy for an honest review.

@JudithDCollins | #JDCMustReadBooks

Pub Date: June 1, 2024

My Rating: 4 Stars

June 2024 Must Read Books

June Newsletter

From the Publisher

Have you ever taken a quiet stroll through an old rural cemetery on a spring day? I used to love walking through the field of gravestones behind my grandmother’s house, uncovering the worn letters etched into the flat stone markers, with a light breeze at my back, lazy bumblebees circling my ankles, and humidity sticking loose tendrils of hair to my neck. It felt peaceful and not-quite sad but…wistful.

Who walked those paths before me, and whose lives are commemorated by the grown-over graves? And for that matter, who carved the stones, dedicating their artistry and skill to preserving the memory of others?

Mary Ellen Taylor’s latest novel, The Promise of Tomorrow, explores how the mementos we leave behind—headstones, photographs, love letters, family recipes, and unfinished bucket lists—can change the lives of those who loved us, sometimes for generations. Our main character, Olympia, returns home for a happy occasion, but, once there, she must reckon with some of the sadness she’d run from.

It’s a poignant, heartfelt story that brought me back to memories of my grandmother’s house with that grassy field, her Sunday dinners, and the boundless curiosity I felt about the family members who lived before me and who I never met.

—Alison Dasho, Editor

About the Author

Amazon Charts bestselling author, Mary Ellen Taylor’s love of her home state Virginia is evident in her contemporary women’s fiction, including Winter Cottage , Spring House, and Honeysuckle Season. She brings her new home on the Outer Banks of North Carolina to life in her latest novel The Brighter The Light and When the Rain Ends

As do so many people, her protagonists search for their place in the world, exploring issues of family, home, love and belonging. Inevitably, Mary Ellen’s stories interweave setting, history and mysteries that span past and present.

Mary Ellen is also known nationally as New York Times and USA Today bestselling suspense novelist Mary Burton. Together, they have published forty-nine novels and five novellas. Mary Burton’s latest, The House Beyond the Dunes, is a September 2023 release.

When not traveling or writing, Mary Ellen spends time with her husband enjoying walks on the beach with their miniature dachshunds, Buddy, Bella and Tiki. WEBSITE