Marie Harper Wright, $2.99, ISBN 978-1-7399307-0-7
Contemporary Romance, 2021

Reading Marie Harper Wright’s No Promises has me questioning the meaning of life. No, I don’t mean that, I’m just trying to see if I can be as melodramatic as the heroine Jodie Cook. I do wonder about one thing though: the heroine and, to a lesser extent, the hero Tony Wade keep introducing themselves to various characters so often that I actually begin to keep count of how many times they do this.

Then I realize I’m probably doing the same things that led Jodie to be where she is, at 29 with no career and no man and nothing else, and I decide to exercise my observation skills on more worthwhile subjects, like picking the next movies to watch on a streaming service based on how hot the guy on the movie poster is.

Really, though, why does the author feel the need to keep having Jodie say “Hi, I’m Jodie!” over and over? The reader already knows the heroine’s name, so this need to have every introductory conversation of the heroine to be recorded makes little sense… unless the author is paid by the word, I guess.

Anyway, Jodie. She’s a wet rag, and I can’t figure out whether this is intentional on the author’s part. Our heroine has no career and no man, the latter being so important that it is brought up pretty often, and she starts to cry when her friend has to stand her up because the friend’s child is sick, and Jodie’s mom can’t take this friend’s place in our heroine’s outing. Does the heroine have dependency issues?

Shrugging, she said, “It’s nothing, I was just thinking about a Friends episode.”

God, she was cute when she was embarrassed. “What?” he asked, frowning. What was she talking about?

“You know the TV show? Friends?” she insisted in dismay. She was obviously a big fan. Who wasn’t?

Even her conversations feel off. Why is she dismayed that Tom doesn’t know Friends? What year is this anyway, it’s not like Friends is hot at the moment?

Our heroine hates her time in London, saying that she has never wanted to be part of the rat race, and now she’s in Winton Green to start life anew. How does she react?

That night she slept fitfully, tossing and turning. She couldn’t understand it. She’d slept so well the night before. But maybe that was from the exhaustion of moving and the cider she had drunk at the pub? Being in the cottage, she couldn’t help but feel alone. She hadn’t ever thought about it before, but living in London all her life, she had been surrounded by people. And now she wasn’t. It was just her. The dark green outside was distracting. In her flat in London, everything was lit up like a Christmas tree and the traffic buzzed below her, no matter what time of night it was. Only now, when it was gone, did she realise how used to the noise she was, how she had needed the hustle and bustle to sleep. Now there was nothing.

No one.

Anywhere.

Seriously, how old is this woman? She doesn’t seem to know what she wants, she overreacts to a ridiculous degree to every freaking thing, and she seems to grasp at any excuse to feel miserable. I’m not joking. Every time she is in a scene, negativity seeps out of her every pore.

She bristled, her jaw clenching together. Whoa, she really was grumpy when she was tired. “Yes.” She shook her head and carried on walking, one step in front of him. “I’m going to try and find a part-time job while the business is setting up, but if I can’t, I might have to go into full-time employment. But that will mean I won’t have as much time to work on the business, so it’ll take longer to get up and running. Then what’s the point at all?” she ranted, barely taking a breath.

I have no idea what Tom sees in her, but he seems to enjoy antagonizing and flustering her as he finds her reaction to his teasing and prodding too cute for words. Well, someone has to appreciate what a wet rag the heroine is, I guess.

As expected, Tom is here to help our heroine get her act together. It’s not like she makes it easy for him, because a story is only sexy when the hero manages to pull the heroine back from the brink of complete self sabotage. Too bad he doesn’t pull me back from falling over the edge when it comes to the heroine making me want to scream in exasperation.

Perhaps the author wants Jodie’s character arc to be one of her finding herself or something like that, but what I get here is the story of a guy doing his best to hold the heroine from a complete breakdown due to her state of perpetual discombobulation and whiny “I just can’t!” attitude. The heroine gets a little better toward the end, and is rewarded by the hero cheering her on in a disconcertingly patronizing manner, like she’s a special needs child that finally gets to put on her shoes correctly for the first time.

The heroine’s 29. She is a grown-ass woman. The author doesn’t tell me whether Jodie has any psychological issue to deal with, so by right our heroine shouldn’t be treated like she’s that special needs child!

In the end, there’s something really off about No Promises that keeps me from enjoying it fully. The heroine’s too emotionally needy, too hapless, and too melodramatic about even the tiniest thing. She should be on some kind of psychiatric medications, maybe some mood stabilizers, going by the way she goes on and on, and yet the story treats her antics as something normal. Since the heroine is supposed to be a normal adult, it is also bizarre then how the hero acts like Jodie succeeding in the basic art of adult-ing is something truly remarkable—like he expects her to be too stupid to succeed in the first place.

I don’t know. Maybe this is a case of the author not realizing how her characters are coming off as to the reader, but in the end, this one leaves me far more flummoxed than entertained.