Name: Promise Not to Tell
Rating: 3.692307692307693 (13 reviews)

Jennifer McMahon

Returning to her small home town in Vermont to care for her Alzheimer's patient mother, reserved forty-one-year-old nurse Kate finds herself inadvertently drawn into the murder investigation of a young girl, a case that reminds her of the death of an impoverished childhood friend years earlier. Original. A first novel. 30,000 first printing.

A Novel

Promise Not to Tell

Returning to her small home town in Vermont to care for her Alzheimer's patient mother, reserved forty-one-year-old nurse Kate finds herself inadvertently drawn into the murder investigation of a young girl, a case that reminds her of the death of an impoverished childhood friend years earlier.

a novel

Promise not to tell

W. J. Long III

I will be frank. I despise the main character of this novel. Kate Cypher is as cowardly and indecisive as a child as she once grown. She lacks the ability to identify a moral compass, let alone the conviction required to follow one.

I say all this to accentuate just how much the rest of the novel worked for me. The nature of this supernatural thriller isn't particularly original, but the small town and its cast of characters rung true to me on a personal level.

Del is by far the highlight. A tragic little girl, despised by her peers and abused by her family, she still walks to the beat if her own macabre drum and despite how abrasive she could be, I lived for the chapters where she appears.

As usual, I won't spoil the plot, but the split timelines of the book do drive tension and partition discoveries exceptionally well, tightening the rivets of suspense with each subsequent chapter.

Jennifer Mcmahon took a premise that was fairly pedestrian, a loathesome main character, and a so-so conclusion and infused what was left with so much heart and character that against all odds, I loved it.

Part coming-of-age novel, part ghost story, part psychological thriller - a powerful novel of adolescent friendship, betrayal and murder Kate Cypher has returned home to Vermont, after a telephone call from friends who are worried about her mother's failing health. On the night she arrives, a young girl is murdered, a horrific crime that eerily mirrors another from Kate's childhood. Three decades earlier, her misfit friend Del, shunned and derided by her classmates as "the potato girl", was brutally slain. Del's killer was never found, and Del achieved immortality in local legends and ghost stories. Now, as the new murder investigation draws Kate irresistibly in, her past and present collide in terrifying and unexpected ways. But nothing is quite what it seems - and the grim spectres of her childhood are far from forgotten.

Lilian Housley

Kept me guessing till the very end, and definitely creeped me out I chose the wrong killer before it was really unfurled. However, I did get a little confused with all the jumps from past to present.

Peace out desert rose.

Fellowes Cynthia

Amy Maddess

It was so good and so promising and then the end was so bad. Frustrating!

danielle bush

3.5 rounded up. 
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I enjoyed this story and the characters it just isn't a book that I think I'm going to read again. 
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Kate had a friend.. a strange little girl that the other kids called the potato girl, and made fun of quite a bit.. she didn't want anyone else to know she was friends with Del and one day she was killed in the woods. 
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Years later Kate returns home to help take care of her mother with Alzheimers and decide if she should be placed in a nursing home. When another little girl is killed In the woods exactly like Del things start to get weird.. it seems the only way to solve this new murder is to find out what happened to Del all those years ago.. it's a good thing that Del seems to have come back to help.

Megan Cooper

This was one of those impulse buys - picked up based on a passing comment on a mailing list. I was hoping for a creepier book - one that would make me think twice about turning out the light, but in the end I found a book that I devoured in two nights and was an interesting story with sympathetic characters that made me more interested than the murder mystery part of the story. 

The story revolves around Kate Cypher, a forty something woman, who grudgingly returns home to take care of her her aging mother, her alzheimer's reaching the point where she is unable to live by herself and is starting to put herself and others at risk. The night Kate arrives, a young girl is murdered in the woods behind their home. The death of the girl is reminiscent of the thirty year old unsolved murder of Del Griswold. The book switches from past to present as Kate remembers the events leading up to and her own guilt over the the death of Del. There is a link between the two murders and as Kate begins to try to unravel the mystery behind her friend's death when she was ten and the copycat murder of another girl thirty years later - of course odd things are bound to happen as all of this takes place. 

There's a good bit of suspense and second guessing as the story progresses - is there a ghost, could Kate's addled mother be reliving the past, could Kate be involved? I think the true strength of the book was the story line of the two young girls in the 70s. Kate arrives in town with her mother, moving into the local hippie commune. Kate is desperate to fit in with the other kids, but finds it difficult - there's something innately evil about cliques of adolescents isn't there? On the neighbouring farm lives Del- the butt of the teasing and derision of all the other kids. Kate finds herself drawn to the odd and wild girl - although she is afraid of anyone finding out that she is friends with "the Potato Girl" . As a reader, I couldn't help but like Del - she was a tough kid, full of swagger and bravado, but she wouldn't let anyone grind her down - which made her death, and Kate's actions that much more haunting. Kate, both past and present, was also a character I couldn't help but empathize with. As much as I wanted to know who had killed the girls (past and present), I was more interested in reading more of Del and Kate.

I would recommend this one - more as a character study, coming of age kind of story rather than as a ghost story.

Steph

Martha F.

Taous Merakchi

Rosie Yakob 

Celestine Taevs-Nakaya

Maggie Gordon

Promise Not To Tell

Forty-one-year-old school nurse Kate Cypher has returned home to rural Vermont to care for her mother who's afflicted with Alzheimer's. On the night she arrives, a young girl is murdered—a horrific crime that eerily mirrors another from Kate's childhood. Three decades earlier, her dirt-poor friend Del—shunned and derided by classmates as "Potato Girl"—was brutally slain. Del's killer was never found, while the victim has since achieved immortality in local legends and ghost stories. Now, as this new murder investigation draws Kate irresistibly in, her past and present collide in terrifying, unexpected ways. Because nothing is quite what it seems . . . and the grim specters of her youth are far from forgotten. More than just a murder mystery, Jennifer McMahon's extraordinary debut novel, Promise Not to Tell, is a story of friendship and family, devotion and betrayal—tautly written, deeply insightful, beautifully evocative, and utterly unforgettable.

Promise Not to Tell A Novel

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