Jennifer McMahon Does Not Need The Supernatural For Her Books!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                    Well, girls, I had never read it, until now, but I am glad I did.  "Promise Not To Tell" is the story of two women--one of whom is a deceased little girl.  That child, Delores Griswold, 11, carries this story, while Kate Cypher, in the present, moves it forward.  There is no need for the supernatural shenanigans that transpire toward the climax, because Del is so compelling a figure--think of Rebecca in Du Maurier's  novel, whom one never sees, but is THERE--she overwhelms the novel.  That is Del on the cover.  Remember the classmate I wrote about who haunts me to this day, Harriet Wearie???????  Well, Del could have very well been a stand in for Harriet.

                                      Dubbed by ridicule in life and myth after death as the Potato Girl, due to her white trash upbringing, Del becomes home friends with Kate when they are girls. Then she is murdered, in 1971. Thirty years later, Kate, now a nurse living in Seattle, who has had a strange upbringing herself---by a free loving hippie mother, living in a tent!!!!!!!--is still haunted by Del, especially now that she is back in town, and the killer was never found, nor the murder solved.

                                        It is, in the end, and I have to say I was stumped.  The killer turned out to be someone other than I had thought, and I did not see it coming.

                                         There is so much psychological complexity--bullying, secrecy, homosexuality--in this novel, one does not need to make Del into a literal ghost. That is what Jennifer McMahon does, and while it does not hurt proceedings, it is not necessary, One does not need to resort to melodrama, when there is compelling drama.  I sort of felt that too, about "The Night Sister," though I can justify it there with less difficulty.

                                            This was Jennifer McMahon's debut novel, back in 2007. How the hell did I miss it????????  Well, don't you, girls!    To think there are at least four other books I have yet to read!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                               If I get through my colonoscopy--June 6, it will either be a Jennifer McMahon or Jane Austen Summer.  The way I read, probably both, darlings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!