Book Review: Promises We Meant to Keep

Promises We Meant to Keep by Monica Murphy is the third book in the Lancaster Prep series although it can be read as a standalone (you’d just get spoilers of books 1 and 2) and also it’s sort of like a spin-off because it doesn’t take place at Lancaster Prep. It takes place a few years after high school.

If you read book 1 in the Lancaster Prep series then you are familiar with Sylvie Lancaster and Spencer Donato. This book takes place a few years later and they are in their early 20s. Sylvie is Whit’s younger sister and Spencer is Whit’s best friend. Sylvie has had health issues all her life and she talks a lot in Things I Wanted to Say about how she was dying and her mother was constantly taking her out of school to visit with doctors around the world to figure out what’s wrong with her.

When Promises We Meant to Keep begins we learn that not only were Sylvie and Spencer flirting all through their teens, but secretly hooking up. Right from the start, it’s evident that Sylvie’s mother is controlling and manipulative. She forced Sylvie to marry a man her father’s age and Spencer cannot forgive her. Fast forward a few years and Sylvie is a widow and attending Whit and Summer’s wedding. Spencer is, of course, the best man and this is the first time Sylvie and Spencer are seeing each other.

Can Spencer get past Sylvie getting married? Can Sylvie be free of her mother’s control once and for all and find happiness with Spencer?

I really liked this book and in some ways I liked it more than Things I Wanted to Say. I really liked Sylvie and Spencer. I loved seeing them finding their way back to one another and admitting how much they’ve always loved each other. And after everything Sylvie has been through all her life I loved seeing her stand up for herself and have her family and Spencer rally around her. It was also fun to see Whit and Summer again and even Crew and Wren and other Lancasters!

Read this if you want a spicy brother’s best friend, second chance romance.

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