Book Review: Promise Kept

Title: Promise Kept

Author: Jodi Allen Brice

Date: 2021

Quote: "Everything she owned was in her car."

Heather is one of those young people who grow up as wards of the state and often, when they reach the official cut-off age for foster care funding, have no property and no skills. Heather's luckier than most; she's inherited a car and some personal paraphernalia. She packs up and drives off to a small town where someone is advertising for a caretaker for an old lady.

Not many older people today can afford a full-time live-in caretaker--the best chance always was to keep the house and make room and board part of the salary--and there's tremendous pressure from greedheads in the "health care" industry to let some tax-funded insurance plan pay for a visiting day nurse "who's been vetted by an agency and has appropriate training," whether the agency is honest, the training is necessary, or we'd rather let a student earn a room in our home, or not. (But the greedheads' plan is that none of us will have a home. More money can be sucked out of the taxpayers if we're hustled into tax-subsidized apartments where we'll be ill more often and die faster.) Heather really is lucky. Not only does she meet one of the few old ladies who still has a home and can offer Heather a room of her own, but they're congenial and begin to bond.

What makes this romance sweet is that it's mostly about Heather's bonding with the last, best foster mother she will have. Heather is young and pretty. Hormones will do their thing. A young man who thinks he's just looking out for his dear, kind old neighbor, making sure she's not being taken advantage of, is actually noticing Heather's charm and beauty and good character. When his suspiciousness is not stressing Heather out, she likes him, too. You know where this has to go. By the end of the book they'll be going to church together. But first Heather will convince people in the little town in Mississippi that they can like and trust a stranger from Atlanta, and will find a permanent job and home of her own so she can afford to take her time. 

For young romance readers this story may be aspirational. For seniors being bombarded with info-mercials about retirement projects, it's recommended reading.