Have you ever made a promise you never expected to keep? A review of “Beginning of Forever” by Terri Rochenski

Yes, I am still on my blog tour for “Make Believe” and “For the Love of Christmas” but today is one of those great days when I can hop back here and share a little love.

This was a crazy idea, but at the time it seemed like a good one when I agreed.  Terri Rochenski, who is an anthology buddy from “Make Believe” is also in a Christmas anthology that was just released.  “Christmas Magic” is available now for your Snuggly holiday reading pleasure.

Anyway, we decided to review each other’s stories on the same day.  (Yeah, no pressure)  So, to read her review of my story “Connect the Dots” from the “For the Love of Christmas” anthology, click HERE to hop on over to Terri’s site.  I’ll be jumping over there in a minute with you to see what she said.

But in the meantime, let’s Chat about Terri’s story.

Now, Christmas is supposed to be a time of joy, right?

DON’T SAY NO!  I LOVE CHRISTMAS!

Anyway, this is my conundrum:  I’m reading “The Beginning of Forever”, ready for an uplifting romance… and it starts off on page one with the love of her life DYING.

Where’s the love?  Where’s the joy? What’s going to happen to that dinner she has in the oven?

Dang, I was bawling my freaking eyes out!

I could not, in my right mind, figure out where she was going with this… and then “it” happened. I figured it out.

This is not really a story about Christmas.

It is not even really what I would consider a Romance.

This is a story about coming to grips with life, and finding a way to cope.  This is a story about moving on, about self-discovery, and using your past to guide your future.

Terri realistically weaves this 50’s based historical “romance” into a story that will leave you wiping the tears from your eyes and turning pages, begging for everything to turn out all right.

As for the title of this review: Have you ever made a promise you never expected to keep? I need to keep that to myself because it’s a spoiler… but that is also what this story is about… Keeping promises because you have to, not because you want to, and then dealing with finding out you want to keep your promise after all.

This is a wonderfully spun tale that Rochenski should be very proud of.

My only gripe is that it is sandwiched in an anthology of more whimsical tales, and I’m not sure the readers of the “lighter” stories enclosed will “get” the depth of emotion and strength of this story. This is not a light fun read.  This is more centered to someone who enjoys something with more serious content.  Absolutely well done.

Okay… now I’m hopping over to see what she said about mine… Coming with me?

Are ya back? I hope what she said was nice.  As for comments, let’s keep with the title… “Have you ever made a promise you never expected to keep?”  Well, have you?

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