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The Last Promise
Having followed her new husband to his native home in rustic Tuscany, Eliana distracts herself from her marital disappointments by caring for her asthmatic son and finds herself reevaluating her life when she meets a fellow art lover, American Ross Story. 450,000 first printing.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2002
308 people are currently reading
4735 people want to read
About the author
Richard Paul Evans
227 books6,522 followersWhen Richard Paul Evans wrote the #1 best-seller, The Christmas Box, he never intended on becoming an internationally known author. His quiet story of parental love and the true meaning of Christmas made history when it became simultaneously the #1 hardcover and paperback book in the nation. Since then, more than eight million copies of The Christmas Box have been printed. He has since written eleven consecutive New York Times bestsellers. He is one the few authors in history to have hit both the fiction and non-fiction bestseller lists. He has won several awards for his books including the 1998 American Mothers Book Award, two first place Storytelling World Awards, and the 2005 Romantic Times Best Women Novel of the Year Award. His books have been translated into more than 22 languages and several have been international best sellers.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 655 reviews
June 15, 2017
Fantastic book. The only problem is that I'm now longing to go back to Italy.
May 25, 2011
When Deseret Book CEO Sheri Dew announced the store's revised buying guidelines late last year [2002]—and specifically that Richard Paul Evan's latest novel, The Last Promise, hadn't made the cut—my immediate reaction was to snort in derision. A bunch of sanctimonious, neo-Victorian fussbudgets trying to micromanage our moral and aesthetic lives, under the guise of what Dew had the audacity to claim was a "business decision."
Then I read the book.
Deseret Book may indeed be run by a bunch of sanctimonious, neo-Victorian fussbudgets, whose recently-discovered principles in this case only gave a bad book much free publicity (I read the book, to start with). But they are right to insist that The Last Promise does not deserve the imprimatur of any institution even peripherally related to any church anywhere.
This isn't the primary reason, but the overwrought title is itself ultimately germane to nothing. The "last promise" (indeed, not made until the last 40 pages of the book) is quickly broken, which I suppose should be read to mean: this is the last promise people like this should make to anybody. It is, in fact, a category romance of sub-par quality. I hasten to add that I have nothing against category romances—an unjustly slighted genre, I believe—just bad writing in general, and especially pretentious, bad writing.
If nothing else, The Last Promise will quickly exhaust any fondness you might have for the epigram-as-chapter-heading style.
Delving into a subject Evans knew something about might have also clarified in his mind what was worth promising in the first place. Eliana, our heroine, is ostensibly "a devout Catholic," though by all indications what the author knows about Catholicism he picked up on the Vatican tour. He keeps his protagonist away from any actual worship, keeps her from breathing a word to any actual priest, because "the priest at the small church near the villa used copious amounts of incense in his worship," and the incense gives her son asthma. Alas, "She had tried other churches in the area and found them all to be the same" (p. 10).
Convenient, that.
The only discernable point to this bit of biographical background is to enable her to marry the scion of an Italian winery without turning the whole thing into a comedy. Straining credulity further, he has her growing up in Vernal, Utah. You would think that a Catholic growing up in Utah would have something to say about the plentitude of Mormons there, and the inevitable clash of small-town religious cultures. Nope. You would not know from reading the book that any Mormons live in Utah. Thus do the incongruities gush forth.
It would not have been an insurmountable problem had Evans played around more with the obvious subtext, analogizing the non-Mormon in Utah to the fish-out-of-water American in Italy. Instead, he shies from the intriguing dramatic possibilities and resorts to hackneyed story devices that are old by category romance standards.
To sum up: impossibly beautiful wife (Eliana) is trapped in a loveless marriage to philandering rogue of husband (Maurizio). One day a handsome American expatriate with a mysterious past (Ross) rents a flat in the family villa. But when you get right down to it, it's no different than those silly French farces about the wife who discovers her husband is cheating on her, and gets even by cheating on him back with the houseguests. Except that Evans' version is not even indecently humorous.
Okay, Evans can't actually have them sleeping together. No, wait, they do sleep together, the loophole being that they only "sleep." Evans has claimed that the snogging going on when they are awake is "not adultery." Yes, and Bill Clinton did not have "sex" with "that woman," and "didn't inhale," either. If it is facile to assert (as I do) that the explicit description of sexual behavior is, ipso facto, immoral, then it is equally facile to argue that a narrative somehow garners a patina of respectability solely because of its lack of explicit content.
At any rate, I wasn't aware that copulation alone defined adultery. Stranger still, given Evans' protestations, are his several references to the Vestal Virgins, remembered for the gristly fate that awaited them if they fell from "virginal grace." In a climactic scene (p. 221), Eliana interrupts Ross's museum tour group before an exhibit of The Vestals and asks in a loud voice if it was "worth it" to these women to break their vows, considering the penalties that awaited them.
To which Ross answers, "I guess only the Vestals could say. But apparently eighteen of them though so."
Now, exactly how are we supposed to read that?
Evans rationalizes this morally muddy relationship with he-hit-me-first logic. Short version: if your husband is a jerk, it's okay to get emotionally involved with another man. Fifteen billion times we are reminded of what a louse Maurizio is. The narrative from his point-of-view exists only to damn his character with cheap shots and borderline ethnic slurs.
Our first introduction to the Italian male (not Maurizio) consists of the following: "Just then a man, shirtless, maybe in his later fifties with a belly hanging over his swimsuit and a cigar clamped between his front teeth, stopped in front of her chair."
Feel swept off your feet yet? Eliana later helpfully explains that "the Italian men regard a lone woman the same way they would a bill on the sidewalk." And Evans (in authorial voice) confirms that "It was true" (p. 4). True or not, it's not the point. I'm reminded of the Dilbert strip in which one of Dilbert's colleagues confides to Dogbert, "I criticize my coworkers to make myself look smart." To which Dogbert replies, "Apparently it isn't working . . . . Oh, remind me to add nuts to my grocery list."
Evans thinks this is a workable strategy. So we are further reminded that none of the wives of Maurizio's friends "expected their husbands' help in domestic matters," either (p. 15). The marriage counselor Eliana drags her husband to sides with him and tells her that it's all her problem (p. 16). And the husband of Eliana's sister-in-law, Anna, "left her for a young Swiss woman she discovered he had been having an affair with for more than seven years" (p. 53).
Ross, in contrast, is described by every Italian woman he encounters as bello, and a hotel receptionist he's known for about five minutes offers to sleep with him (p. 200). "We'd have fun," she tells him (p. 202).
Oh, and Maurizio is the World's Worst Father Ever. It is simply not enough that he be immature, irresponsible, or a workaholic. We are supposed to believe that the man is utterly indifferent to his son's existence, that he "never inquires about his son's health" (p. 13), has "no idea how to take care of his own son's basic needs" (p. 15), and uses him as a pawn to keep his wife a kept woman.
We are supposed to believe as well that the son, in turn, should deny all the incalculables of human nature and transfer all his affection, at the drop of the proverbial hat, to a complete stranger. By page 116 we find Eliana telling Ross, "[Alessio] was so upset that he missed you the last time. I had to promise him that he could stay up until you came." And by the end of the novel, Maurizio is confessing to Eliana, "He's not really my son . . . . He doesn't call me father . . . . He hates me" (p. 261).
Of the six impossible things I'm willing to believe before breakfast, this isn't one of them. But, gee, doesn't it make divorce the easy next step to take.
Still, Evans must reduce the Maurizio to wife-beating status to make the case compelling enough. The literary ends do not justify the means. While Maurizio is undoubtedly a jerk, the thesis, "My husband is a jerk," is a thin and unrewarding source of conflict. This is not to say that infidelity or bad parenting should be lightly excused, but it's not like he's smuggling drugs or harboring terrorists. The man has tact, if nothing else. He doesn't bring it home, like, ahem, his stupid wife. And why, your grandmother would ask, should he change his behavior when he can have his cake and get the milk for free?
All Eliana has to say in her defense is that she married "too young." Too young—she was in college. So she went to the store one day to pick up a rich, handsome, Italian husband, and, darn, if she'd waited a day or two she could have gotten a better model, and on sale, to boot.
Were she a conservative John Paul II American Catholic, that would have made things interesting. But the obvious contention, "I can't divorce you because I'm Catholic," is never raised. Instead, she stays in the marriage, we are told, because she's afraid she would lose custody of her child, a child whose existence is exploited by Evans for all shoddy manner of story conveniences. (When in doubt, send the sick kid to the E.R.) It is a valid concern—the reasons sound fairly convincing once you accept the Maurizio-as-monster caricature—but such a concern should lead to the weighing of freedom and happiness, and the making of deals with your own personal devils.
Even as compromised a woman as Hillary Clinton reportedly whacked Bill with an ashtray on occasion, and then went out and made a life for herself. Sure, her not-yet-erstwhile husband being President of the United States sure helped. Call it metaphysical alimony. And Eliana is hardly a single mother struggling to survive on scant child support payments. In exchange for her husband's money, she lives a comfortable, almost royal (no kidding, Evans makes her by marriage a de jure countess), if dilatory existence.
She does nothing to change the state of her life, a curious contrast with Birdman-of-Alcatraz Ross. That's the sinkhole the book crumbles into and never crawls out of: she's BORING. No wonder her husband never comes home, to a beautiful but dull woman who mopes and sighs and makes dinners he won't eat, and dabbles at paintings no one will see, and spends an awful lot of time doing laundry for three people (a glaring lapse: a man of Maurizio's stature and resources, if for no other reason than sheer vanity, would hire help for these menial tasks).
Early on in one of Evans' many head-hopping digressions, we are treated to Maurizio's thoughts on the subject. In a passage that feels like the author was responding to an editor's suggestion that he try to show the husband's side of things, the reader is rewarded with a several hundred words of the man's stream-of-consciousness, detailing his coping strategy in this dysfunctional relationship:
Why, indeed? But having raised them, Evans never effectively counters these charges. He only tells us that Eliana "blamed herself for not seeing it coming," and then reverses himself a page later, asserting that she "felt the victim of a marital bait and switch" (p. 16). Victim turns out to be her primary occupation.
Based on the themes of her General Conference addresses, I can believe that this is what raised Sheri Dew's hackles most of all. Evans is climbing on his best-seller soapbox to preach a medieval theme I've encountered in other Mormon romances, that of the Great Wheel of Fate. Climb aboard at the wrong instance and your life is doomed until it rolls around and rights itself. We are supposed to admire the protagonist merely for hanging on and letting go when the sunny side of life shows up like a stop on a Disneyland amusement ride.
Had Evans eliminated the implied infidelity business from the start, he would then have had to address this problem with human agency. Were Eliana already divorced, for example, but in the interest of her sickly child living in her ex's villa and growing dependent on his largess, and he on the free child care and the warm hearth to come home to—and were it not strongly implied that, despite his travails, Ross still had bucks in the bank—this would have forced her to make a decision of her own volition, not wait for heaven to smile upon her, the ball to drop into the right slot at the roulette table.
To write the story right, though, you would have to have some insights into why the Hillarys end up with the Bills in the first place. I'm not convinced that Evans has a clue. And we're not necessarily talking about deep psychology. As Slate's "Dear Prudence" advice columnist advised a reader in a similar quandary, the quandary that Eliana apparently blew through without a second thought: "My dear, when it comes to making a judgment about a man's character, what else is there besides his past? It is through one's history that you learn about judgments, morals, and choices."
Judgements, morals, and hard choices are the last things on anybody's mind in The Last Promise. Which is why Evans can't begin the book without first rationalizing his choice of subject matter. Though here he does demonstrate some talent in composition. Evans introduces himself in a self-deprecating account of the Famous Author Nobody's Heard Of, bumbling around Italy with his family. One day he's relaxing poolside at a country club outside Florence and is told this story by a gorgeous, sunbathing woman he strikes up a conversation with.
Unfortunately, this promising narrative voice is soon drowned out by the drone of a loquacious, self-important guy who's got you cornered on a five-hour bus trip and is convinced that you are dying to hear his profoundly superficial life story. But who only convinces you that this is the last time you're riding this particular bus anywhere, thank you very much.
Then I read the book.
Deseret Book may indeed be run by a bunch of sanctimonious, neo-Victorian fussbudgets, whose recently-discovered principles in this case only gave a bad book much free publicity (I read the book, to start with). But they are right to insist that The Last Promise does not deserve the imprimatur of any institution even peripherally related to any church anywhere.
This isn't the primary reason, but the overwrought title is itself ultimately germane to nothing. The "last promise" (indeed, not made until the last 40 pages of the book) is quickly broken, which I suppose should be read to mean: this is the last promise people like this should make to anybody. It is, in fact, a category romance of sub-par quality. I hasten to add that I have nothing against category romances—an unjustly slighted genre, I believe—just bad writing in general, and especially pretentious, bad writing.
If nothing else, The Last Promise will quickly exhaust any fondness you might have for the epigram-as-chapter-heading style.
Delving into a subject Evans knew something about might have also clarified in his mind what was worth promising in the first place. Eliana, our heroine, is ostensibly "a devout Catholic," though by all indications what the author knows about Catholicism he picked up on the Vatican tour. He keeps his protagonist away from any actual worship, keeps her from breathing a word to any actual priest, because "the priest at the small church near the villa used copious amounts of incense in his worship," and the incense gives her son asthma. Alas, "She had tried other churches in the area and found them all to be the same" (p. 10).
Convenient, that.
The only discernable point to this bit of biographical background is to enable her to marry the scion of an Italian winery without turning the whole thing into a comedy. Straining credulity further, he has her growing up in Vernal, Utah. You would think that a Catholic growing up in Utah would have something to say about the plentitude of Mormons there, and the inevitable clash of small-town religious cultures. Nope. You would not know from reading the book that any Mormons live in Utah. Thus do the incongruities gush forth.
It would not have been an insurmountable problem had Evans played around more with the obvious subtext, analogizing the non-Mormon in Utah to the fish-out-of-water American in Italy. Instead, he shies from the intriguing dramatic possibilities and resorts to hackneyed story devices that are old by category romance standards.
To sum up: impossibly beautiful wife (Eliana) is trapped in a loveless marriage to philandering rogue of husband (Maurizio). One day a handsome American expatriate with a mysterious past (Ross) rents a flat in the family villa. But when you get right down to it, it's no different than those silly French farces about the wife who discovers her husband is cheating on her, and gets even by cheating on him back with the houseguests. Except that Evans' version is not even indecently humorous.
Okay, Evans can't actually have them sleeping together. No, wait, they do sleep together, the loophole being that they only "sleep." Evans has claimed that the snogging going on when they are awake is "not adultery." Yes, and Bill Clinton did not have "sex" with "that woman," and "didn't inhale," either. If it is facile to assert (as I do) that the explicit description of sexual behavior is, ipso facto, immoral, then it is equally facile to argue that a narrative somehow garners a patina of respectability solely because of its lack of explicit content.
At any rate, I wasn't aware that copulation alone defined adultery. Stranger still, given Evans' protestations, are his several references to the Vestal Virgins, remembered for the gristly fate that awaited them if they fell from "virginal grace." In a climactic scene (p. 221), Eliana interrupts Ross's museum tour group before an exhibit of The Vestals and asks in a loud voice if it was "worth it" to these women to break their vows, considering the penalties that awaited them.
To which Ross answers, "I guess only the Vestals could say. But apparently eighteen of them though so."
Now, exactly how are we supposed to read that?
Evans rationalizes this morally muddy relationship with he-hit-me-first logic. Short version: if your husband is a jerk, it's okay to get emotionally involved with another man. Fifteen billion times we are reminded of what a louse Maurizio is. The narrative from his point-of-view exists only to damn his character with cheap shots and borderline ethnic slurs.
Our first introduction to the Italian male (not Maurizio) consists of the following: "Just then a man, shirtless, maybe in his later fifties with a belly hanging over his swimsuit and a cigar clamped between his front teeth, stopped in front of her chair."
Feel swept off your feet yet? Eliana later helpfully explains that "the Italian men regard a lone woman the same way they would a bill on the sidewalk." And Evans (in authorial voice) confirms that "It was true" (p. 4). True or not, it's not the point. I'm reminded of the Dilbert strip in which one of Dilbert's colleagues confides to Dogbert, "I criticize my coworkers to make myself look smart." To which Dogbert replies, "Apparently it isn't working . . . . Oh, remind me to add nuts to my grocery list."
Evans thinks this is a workable strategy. So we are further reminded that none of the wives of Maurizio's friends "expected their husbands' help in domestic matters," either (p. 15). The marriage counselor Eliana drags her husband to sides with him and tells her that it's all her problem (p. 16). And the husband of Eliana's sister-in-law, Anna, "left her for a young Swiss woman she discovered he had been having an affair with for more than seven years" (p. 53).
Ross, in contrast, is described by every Italian woman he encounters as bello, and a hotel receptionist he's known for about five minutes offers to sleep with him (p. 200). "We'd have fun," she tells him (p. 202).
Oh, and Maurizio is the World's Worst Father Ever. It is simply not enough that he be immature, irresponsible, or a workaholic. We are supposed to believe that the man is utterly indifferent to his son's existence, that he "never inquires about his son's health" (p. 13), has "no idea how to take care of his own son's basic needs" (p. 15), and uses him as a pawn to keep his wife a kept woman.
We are supposed to believe as well that the son, in turn, should deny all the incalculables of human nature and transfer all his affection, at the drop of the proverbial hat, to a complete stranger. By page 116 we find Eliana telling Ross, "[Alessio] was so upset that he missed you the last time. I had to promise him that he could stay up until you came." And by the end of the novel, Maurizio is confessing to Eliana, "He's not really my son . . . . He doesn't call me father . . . . He hates me" (p. 261).
Of the six impossible things I'm willing to believe before breakfast, this isn't one of them. But, gee, doesn't it make divorce the easy next step to take.
Still, Evans must reduce the Maurizio to wife-beating status to make the case compelling enough. The literary ends do not justify the means. While Maurizio is undoubtedly a jerk, the thesis, "My husband is a jerk," is a thin and unrewarding source of conflict. This is not to say that infidelity or bad parenting should be lightly excused, but it's not like he's smuggling drugs or harboring terrorists. The man has tact, if nothing else. He doesn't bring it home, like, ahem, his stupid wife. And why, your grandmother would ask, should he change his behavior when he can have his cake and get the milk for free?
All Eliana has to say in her defense is that she married "too young." Too young—she was in college. So she went to the store one day to pick up a rich, handsome, Italian husband, and, darn, if she'd waited a day or two she could have gotten a better model, and on sale, to boot.
Were she a conservative John Paul II American Catholic, that would have made things interesting. But the obvious contention, "I can't divorce you because I'm Catholic," is never raised. Instead, she stays in the marriage, we are told, because she's afraid she would lose custody of her child, a child whose existence is exploited by Evans for all shoddy manner of story conveniences. (When in doubt, send the sick kid to the E.R.) It is a valid concern—the reasons sound fairly convincing once you accept the Maurizio-as-monster caricature—but such a concern should lead to the weighing of freedom and happiness, and the making of deals with your own personal devils.
Even as compromised a woman as Hillary Clinton reportedly whacked Bill with an ashtray on occasion, and then went out and made a life for herself. Sure, her not-yet-erstwhile husband being President of the United States sure helped. Call it metaphysical alimony. And Eliana is hardly a single mother struggling to survive on scant child support payments. In exchange for her husband's money, she lives a comfortable, almost royal (no kidding, Evans makes her by marriage a de jure countess), if dilatory existence.
She does nothing to change the state of her life, a curious contrast with Birdman-of-Alcatraz Ross. That's the sinkhole the book crumbles into and never crawls out of: she's BORING. No wonder her husband never comes home, to a beautiful but dull woman who mopes and sighs and makes dinners he won't eat, and dabbles at paintings no one will see, and spends an awful lot of time doing laundry for three people (a glaring lapse: a man of Maurizio's stature and resources, if for no other reason than sheer vanity, would hire help for these menial tasks).
Early on in one of Evans' many head-hopping digressions, we are treated to Maurizio's thoughts on the subject. In a passage that feels like the author was responding to an editor's suggestion that he try to show the husband's side of things, the reader is rewarded with a several hundred words of the man's stream-of-consciousness, detailing his coping strategy in this dysfunctional relationship:
American women are crazy, [Maurizio] thought. She works all day to make me a meal, then sulks through it . . . .
Eliana would sulk for a while then she'd blow, inevitably launching into a tirade about how little time he spend at home or why he hadn't bothered to call her . . . . Either way, [she] didn't have the stomach for conflict that he had. She would go off for a while then come back and be civil—be a good wife.
Always the same foolishness, he thought. If she wants me home so much, why does she make it so damn miserable to come home? (pp. 31-32)
Why, indeed? But having raised them, Evans never effectively counters these charges. He only tells us that Eliana "blamed herself for not seeing it coming," and then reverses himself a page later, asserting that she "felt the victim of a marital bait and switch" (p. 16). Victim turns out to be her primary occupation.
Based on the themes of her General Conference addresses, I can believe that this is what raised Sheri Dew's hackles most of all. Evans is climbing on his best-seller soapbox to preach a medieval theme I've encountered in other Mormon romances, that of the Great Wheel of Fate. Climb aboard at the wrong instance and your life is doomed until it rolls around and rights itself. We are supposed to admire the protagonist merely for hanging on and letting go when the sunny side of life shows up like a stop on a Disneyland amusement ride.
Had Evans eliminated the implied infidelity business from the start, he would then have had to address this problem with human agency. Were Eliana already divorced, for example, but in the interest of her sickly child living in her ex's villa and growing dependent on his largess, and he on the free child care and the warm hearth to come home to—and were it not strongly implied that, despite his travails, Ross still had bucks in the bank—this would have forced her to make a decision of her own volition, not wait for heaven to smile upon her, the ball to drop into the right slot at the roulette table.
To write the story right, though, you would have to have some insights into why the Hillarys end up with the Bills in the first place. I'm not convinced that Evans has a clue. And we're not necessarily talking about deep psychology. As Slate's "Dear Prudence" advice columnist advised a reader in a similar quandary, the quandary that Eliana apparently blew through without a second thought: "My dear, when it comes to making a judgment about a man's character, what else is there besides his past? It is through one's history that you learn about judgments, morals, and choices."
Judgements, morals, and hard choices are the last things on anybody's mind in The Last Promise. Which is why Evans can't begin the book without first rationalizing his choice of subject matter. Though here he does demonstrate some talent in composition. Evans introduces himself in a self-deprecating account of the Famous Author Nobody's Heard Of, bumbling around Italy with his family. One day he's relaxing poolside at a country club outside Florence and is told this story by a gorgeous, sunbathing woman he strikes up a conversation with.
Unfortunately, this promising narrative voice is soon drowned out by the drone of a loquacious, self-important guy who's got you cornered on a five-hour bus trip and is convinced that you are dying to hear his profoundly superficial life story. But who only convinces you that this is the last time you're riding this particular bus anywhere, thank you very much.
September 1, 2024
When I first picked up this book I thought it was just another romance and I don't like romance novels much. When I began this book I found it rich in the description of Italy, art and wine. I thought of it more as a guide with a wonderful story to keep me interested! The feeling behind the descriptions of the art was most enjoyable and I found myself relating to artworks that I could not even see! I am now anxious to go to Italy more than ever and would not leave without this book in tow.
Ellen, an American, met her husband to be (Maurizio) in the states. While in America, he did as the American's did and did not expect to be waited on hand and foot. Ellen went to Italy with him to live out what most people thought was a fairytale life. It turned out that Maurizio was a neglectful husband to say the least. Since they had an ill son, Ellen (now called Eliana in Italy), devoted her life to raising and caring for their son. When she met Ross she mostly resisted the connection they had and the balance he brought to her and her son's life.
The way the author takes the reader through the emotional ups and downs of Eliana and the explaination of how she deals with the situation is so realistic I kept wondering how a man could actually have written this book. The only deduction I can make is that the author, Richard Paul Evans, is an exceptional, empathetic individual.
Ellen, an American, met her husband to be (Maurizio) in the states. While in America, he did as the American's did and did not expect to be waited on hand and foot. Ellen went to Italy with him to live out what most people thought was a fairytale life. It turned out that Maurizio was a neglectful husband to say the least. Since they had an ill son, Ellen (now called Eliana in Italy), devoted her life to raising and caring for their son. When she met Ross she mostly resisted the connection they had and the balance he brought to her and her son's life.
The way the author takes the reader through the emotional ups and downs of Eliana and the explaination of how she deals with the situation is so realistic I kept wondering how a man could actually have written this book. The only deduction I can make is that the author, Richard Paul Evans, is an exceptional, empathetic individual.
August 26, 2009
This is definitely not my favorite Evans book. The whole Italy thing was fun and different, but otherwise I felt like not only were Evans' standards in writing lower than usual (for one thing it seemed an overabundance of dialogue that didn't always keep the story moving), but he lowered his standards in content too. Thus, this was the first book I've read by him that wasn't a "feel good" read. I was so disappointed (but I still had to finish it to see how it ended). I mean, there's a scene where the female protagonist makes a half-hearted effort to cling to her values and vows, but that's it. She was too wishy-washy for me.
Yes, we all need to feel loved and appreciated that is very important. And it is tragically unfortunate that not everyone has that in their marriage, but the marriage vows should still be upheld until a divorce is final. Not that I'm condoning divorce, but unfortunately sometimes it's necessary. The fact that the two protagonists' love wasn't consummated until after her divorce and their subsequent marriage does not make this novel unique--or the standards high. It's just a watering down of the world's "standards." Ironically, I read this book after reading the article in the September Ensign about fidelity in marriage.
I wonder what Evans' wife thinks of this book...
Yes, we all need to feel loved and appreciated that is very important. And it is tragically unfortunate that not everyone has that in their marriage, but the marriage vows should still be upheld until a divorce is final. Not that I'm condoning divorce, but unfortunately sometimes it's necessary. The fact that the two protagonists' love wasn't consummated until after her divorce and their subsequent marriage does not make this novel unique--or the standards high. It's just a watering down of the world's "standards." Ironically, I read this book after reading the article in the September Ensign about fidelity in marriage.
I wonder what Evans' wife thinks of this book...
May 14, 2008
THE LAST PROMISE is the story of two people that meet and fall in love in the Italian countryside. Eliana is an American woman who marries an Italian man and moves with him back to his native Italy to help manage the family vineyard. While their courtship was wonderful, now that they are married he is rarely home, as he says he's traveling for business. Their son, a highly asthmatic child, Alessio, stays with Eliana while her husband is away. It is fate that brings her together with another American, Ross Story, who is now living in Italy for reasons not immediately made known to the reader. All we know is that he's decided to get away from America to start a new life in Italy. The place he chooses to stay is a room on the vineyard where Eliana lives.
I loved this book!!! I was there in Tuscany with them and could smaell the grapes!
I loved this book!!! I was there in Tuscany with them and could smaell the grapes!
February 16, 2023
This was a page turner. I would give it 4.5 stars. A beautiful and sometimes heartbreaking romance. I loved it and especially because it takes place in Florence & Tuscany and describes the countryside in Italy so well. They use a lot of Italian language in the book which is really cool. I can’t wait to see these places in person. The ending was perfetto!
Taylor, I think you’ll love this since you’ve been there.
Taylor, I think you’ll love this since you’ve been there.
October 20, 2022
3 and a half stars. Some things in this that are not the norm for this author. Definitely an emotional read
February 27, 2023
3.5 Stars - My mom gave this as a book recommendation, and it was such a sweet story. There were many tender moments that had you wishing you were the main characters falling in love in Italy.
Genuinely such a wholesome book with solid writing.
Genuinely such a wholesome book with solid writing.
January 3, 2026
Very enjoyable.
January 25, 2010
What a Great book! I really enjoyed this. I believe it is a true story, and a good one at that. DON'T SKIP THE PROLOGUE, you'll be sorry. It sets the stage for the WHOLE BOOK, and the author goes back to it several times towards the end. I own several of RPE books, and haven't had a chance to read them, but I could not put this down, I read all 300 pages in less than a days time. It is a love story, but one that took a long time to get a happy ending. Many trials and obstacles to overcome, a story of faith, and friendship, Patience, suffering, and true love. I also fell in love with Italy as I read this book. I can speak a fair amount of Spanish, and I enjoyed learning many similar words in French. The author paints a vivid picture of Italy's many cities and vineyards, I found myself for the first time, "getting" the magic of Italy. I Highly recommend it!!
November 7, 2011
Because I spent a year living in Italy, my friend thought I'd enjoy this light read. I did appreciate several things: the way the author opened the book was a good hook, the way the Italian words were worked into the text. That said, there was so much he didn't do. For instance, the protagonist works as a guide at the Uffizi in Florence (how he got that job is completely ridiculous), but we never hear about even ONE painting there. The dialog is ordinary and adds nothing to the story. And he TELLS, tells, tells the story, no showing what's going on or how the characters feel. If you want an implausible and predictable romance set in cliched Italy, you'll like this book.
January 18, 2008
So sad--this book had elements I loved--romance and Italy. I loved the picturesque descriptions of Toscana, the Italian phrases and the talk of food. It made me long to go back. But why did she have to have an affair? Totally not what I expected from Richard Paul Evans.
March 6, 2008
Joys, sorrows and ultimate love set in a small Italian village...could feel myself escaping to this countryside.
October 5, 2014
Brilliante, Signori Evans!!!
December 6, 2014
This was an easy read and a clean romance. My issue though is that Eliana and Ross fall in love while she's married. Yes, her husband is a total jerk but still! 2-3 stars
August 22, 2012
This is a book that intrigued me on many personal levels, yet failed me on almost all of them.
Let me begin with a preface: My mother, in a way, lived the life of Eliana, our "heroine" in "The Last Promise". I am the child of an American mother who married an Italian man in a whirlwind post-college romance, attempted to live in Italy with her newborn child, and found the situation was not one she could bear - not for herself, nor for her daughter. I was literally abducted out of Italy in the early 1970s, only months after my birth, so that my mother and her parents could raise me and so that she could escape a marriage she was not happy with, and a situation she did not want me growing up in. So, as I began reading this book and reading of Eliana's plight, I was immensely intrigued with how the author would proceed. The author sets up the situation in the prologue and epilogue as a "true story", but of course, the only point of view he has to draw upon is Eliana's, not her husband Maurizio's. And just as I have had to with time learn that there are two sides to every story, one must wonder what the other side that is so stereotypically and harshly portrayed here really might have been.
What nearly made me throw the book across the room and give up on it very early on was the implausible set-up for Ross Story (yes, his character's name), our American love interest for Eliana, getting a job as an assistant tour guide at the Uffizi at the drop of the hat. No, he has no experience as a tour guide. No, he has no one to recommend or introduce him. No, he has not taken the once-a-year exam to qualify as a tour guide. But because he can rattle off an art history summary of an artist and a painting, he so impresses the woman in administration that he gets hired to assist one of their resident tour guides on the spot.
Seriously?! This isn't even really necessary to the plot; there are plenty of ways the author could have explored Ross' interest and love for the Uffizi, shown him having reason to be there regularly (perhaps simply wanting to explore and study the works he'd only learned about from afar for so long), especially if he didn't need the money from the work. Which, later on, certainly appears to be the case...
But let's also talk about the amateurish writing. Because it is BAD. So, so bad. Every chapter has to start with a pretentious quote of an Italian saying or proverb, and/or a quote from Ross' diary. I've seen comments elsewhere that the author doesn't even translate or properly transcribe Italian grammar in these quotes, but I'm not enough of an expert to comment on that. It doesn't matter if the chapter is 10 pages or 2 pages, there's some quote at the beginning to sledgehammer home the point we're supposed to get from what follows. It gets very tedious, very fast.
And then there is the lack of a solid narrative voice. While most chapters start with a third person limited narration point of view (typically either Ross or Eliana's), Evans will switch suddenly and awkwardly to the thoughts and point of view of another character before the end of a chapter, sometimes for only a sentence or two. To me that shows he doesn't trust his ability to describe or show the other characters' emotions and motivations through their words and actions. It's jarring and pedestrian, the type of mistake I'd only expect and won't barely tolerate in the most amateur fan fiction I've read.
Evans also loves to info-dump. In the most boring ways possible. Whether he's having Ross regurgitate information about a Renaissance artist or having Eliana describe the wine harvest process in tedious detail, I guess it's supposed to show Evans' knowledge of the subject. But it doesn't make for interesting reading; it only makes for tedious page filler.
All of this really just kept frustrating me because there were so many glimmers of what this story could have been, amidst the mess of what it actually is. I have been to Italy enough, and know enough about my Italian family roots, to know there is much truth in many of the details and situations described. The double standards in men's vs women's infidelity. The Italian court's preference for fathers' rights over mothers'. The way that Italian mothers baby their sons and will never see a daughter-in-law as fully capable of taking care of their sons the way that THEY do. The importance of dressing well, of eating well, of honoring age old traditions and these are not all bad things. But, Evans paints them all in such broad strokes, Eliana's husband such a one-note villain and buffoon, an uncaring father, until a single event seemingly opens his eyes to the mistakes he has been making for years. It's too pat, too neat, too easy. And that's what infuriated me so much.
I'm not even really going into or interested in the whole controversy about Evans' Mormon faith, and how this book was apparently rejected from its first publisher because of the themes of adultery. Because let's be honest, this book is all ABOUT adultery on a certain level. Eliana may not have sex with Ross in the pages of the book, but she is certainly as emotionally adulterous toward her husband as Maurizio is physically adulterous by sleeping with other women throughout their marriage. And there are many ways this could have been played out more realistically and interestingly than the melodrama of the book. Eliana's Catholicism is hardly realistically addressed (why did the author even make her Catholic, when she's supposedly from Utah and he obviously is more familiar with Mormonism than Catholicism?) Faith could have played a much more powerful part of this story, and again there are hints of it that the author never follows through on fully, such as when Ross challenges Eliana that "If your God only loves you conditionally, then He isn't much of a God."
I just finished this book feeling frustrated and disappointed. I certainly won't be in any rush to check out the author's other work based on the problems with the writing basics and structure. And it's a shame because I get a sense that he does love Italy in many of the same ways that I do. But what he might understand about Italy, he seems to fail to understand about how to build believable characters and relationships in fictional writing.
Let me begin with a preface: My mother, in a way, lived the life of Eliana, our "heroine" in "The Last Promise". I am the child of an American mother who married an Italian man in a whirlwind post-college romance, attempted to live in Italy with her newborn child, and found the situation was not one she could bear - not for herself, nor for her daughter. I was literally abducted out of Italy in the early 1970s, only months after my birth, so that my mother and her parents could raise me and so that she could escape a marriage she was not happy with, and a situation she did not want me growing up in. So, as I began reading this book and reading of Eliana's plight, I was immensely intrigued with how the author would proceed. The author sets up the situation in the prologue and epilogue as a "true story", but of course, the only point of view he has to draw upon is Eliana's, not her husband Maurizio's. And just as I have had to with time learn that there are two sides to every story, one must wonder what the other side that is so stereotypically and harshly portrayed here really might have been.
What nearly made me throw the book across the room and give up on it very early on was the implausible set-up for Ross Story (yes, his character's name), our American love interest for Eliana, getting a job as an assistant tour guide at the Uffizi at the drop of the hat. No, he has no experience as a tour guide. No, he has no one to recommend or introduce him. No, he has not taken the once-a-year exam to qualify as a tour guide. But because he can rattle off an art history summary of an artist and a painting, he so impresses the woman in administration that he gets hired to assist one of their resident tour guides on the spot.
Seriously?! This isn't even really necessary to the plot; there are plenty of ways the author could have explored Ross' interest and love for the Uffizi, shown him having reason to be there regularly (perhaps simply wanting to explore and study the works he'd only learned about from afar for so long), especially if he didn't need the money from the work. Which, later on, certainly appears to be the case...
But let's also talk about the amateurish writing. Because it is BAD. So, so bad. Every chapter has to start with a pretentious quote of an Italian saying or proverb, and/or a quote from Ross' diary. I've seen comments elsewhere that the author doesn't even translate or properly transcribe Italian grammar in these quotes, but I'm not enough of an expert to comment on that. It doesn't matter if the chapter is 10 pages or 2 pages, there's some quote at the beginning to sledgehammer home the point we're supposed to get from what follows. It gets very tedious, very fast.
And then there is the lack of a solid narrative voice. While most chapters start with a third person limited narration point of view (typically either Ross or Eliana's), Evans will switch suddenly and awkwardly to the thoughts and point of view of another character before the end of a chapter, sometimes for only a sentence or two. To me that shows he doesn't trust his ability to describe or show the other characters' emotions and motivations through their words and actions. It's jarring and pedestrian, the type of mistake I'd only expect and won't barely tolerate in the most amateur fan fiction I've read.
Evans also loves to info-dump. In the most boring ways possible. Whether he's having Ross regurgitate information about a Renaissance artist or having Eliana describe the wine harvest process in tedious detail, I guess it's supposed to show Evans' knowledge of the subject. But it doesn't make for interesting reading; it only makes for tedious page filler.
All of this really just kept frustrating me because there were so many glimmers of what this story could have been, amidst the mess of what it actually is. I have been to Italy enough, and know enough about my Italian family roots, to know there is much truth in many of the details and situations described. The double standards in men's vs women's infidelity. The Italian court's preference for fathers' rights over mothers'. The way that Italian mothers baby their sons and will never see a daughter-in-law as fully capable of taking care of their sons the way that THEY do. The importance of dressing well, of eating well, of honoring age old traditions and these are not all bad things. But, Evans paints them all in such broad strokes, Eliana's husband such a one-note villain and buffoon, an uncaring father, until a single event seemingly opens his eyes to the mistakes he has been making for years. It's too pat, too neat, too easy. And that's what infuriated me so much.
I'm not even really going into or interested in the whole controversy about Evans' Mormon faith, and how this book was apparently rejected from its first publisher because of the themes of adultery. Because let's be honest, this book is all ABOUT adultery on a certain level. Eliana may not have sex with Ross in the pages of the book, but she is certainly as emotionally adulterous toward her husband as Maurizio is physically adulterous by sleeping with other women throughout their marriage. And there are many ways this could have been played out more realistically and interestingly than the melodrama of the book. Eliana's Catholicism is hardly realistically addressed (why did the author even make her Catholic, when she's supposedly from Utah and he obviously is more familiar with Mormonism than Catholicism?) Faith could have played a much more powerful part of this story, and again there are hints of it that the author never follows through on fully, such as when Ross challenges Eliana that "If your God only loves you conditionally, then He isn't much of a God."
I just finished this book feeling frustrated and disappointed. I certainly won't be in any rush to check out the author's other work based on the problems with the writing basics and structure. And it's a shame because I get a sense that he does love Italy in many of the same ways that I do. But what he might understand about Italy, he seems to fail to understand about how to build believable characters and relationships in fictional writing.
March 4, 2018
This was not as much a Christian Story as a second chance love story. Eliana (Ellen) met and married Mauizio when she was young and she moved to Italy madly in love. Shortly after they moved to Italy, he began having mistresses. When Eliana had a son, Alessio, it turned out that he had serious asthma. As time went on, Alessio got worse and worse and Maurizio was home less and less. She was a very unhappy woman. When she meets Ross, she is very vulnerable and when he treats her with kid gloves, she eventually falls in love. Maurizio is not going to make this easy for either of them. The setting of Florence was wonderful and beautifully described. I also enjoyed the descriptions of the harvest and making the wine. I wish there had been more information about the Uffizzi as I have never been to Italy nor heard of this art gallery. I enjoyed this story and it was a relatively short book to read. I really liked the characters of Eliana, Ross, Anna and Alessio. I could feel Alessio's pain at the absence of his father and Eliana's distress at the lack of a relationship between them. Anna was a hoot. She did not pull any punches and was not afraid of her brother at all. Ross was a man who had been through a lot and I was rooting for him to finally be happy. I liked the way the story both began an ended, tying the story together.
March 1, 2022
I thought that this book was pretty good. The story takes place in Italy and revolves around a woman named Eliana (or as she was known in America, Ellen) and the troubles that she has with her absent husband and keeping care of her asthmatic son Alessio. She moved to Italy to be with her husband because he seemed like an amazing guy, but once she got to Italy the marriage quickly turned into a nightmare. She can’t divorce her husband because the Italian court systems wouldn’t let her keep Alessio if she did divorce him. The book follows Eliana as she meets a man named Ross Story. Ross is from Minneapolis and he used to be an art director for an advertising agency. The story follows how Ross and Eliana fall in love and how that impacts Eliana’s life. I’d recommend this book to anyone interested in a romance novel.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 26, 2021
I enjoyed this book! Refreshing to see a male author that writes such a beautiful romantic story! I liked the characters and how the story developed as well as the ending!
I’m intrigued so I am reading another one of his books now to see if it’s as good as this one was:). Stay tuned!
I’m intrigued so I am reading another one of his books now to see if it’s as good as this one was:). Stay tuned!
April 27, 2018
Another excellent book! You'll love it!
September 6, 2018
Just a beautiful love story with lots of twists and turns. It takes place mostly in Italy, with nice descriptions of their lovely countryside and some of their delicious food. I am finding that this author's books are all page-turners. He sure knows how to weave a tale. Excellent.
own-personal-library
February 2, 2020Part of a readers digest set
January 13, 2022
I loved this book from start to finish, kept my attention and made me feel like I was in Italy. A bittersweet love story!
April 9, 2023
He's a favorite author for a reason.
August 15, 2018
One of my favorite books!
March 18, 2024
This book didn’t really capture my interest until further on into the book. Good read overall.
February 21, 2017
Wow. Certainly a powerful novel Mr. Evans has here - and all from a (true?) story related to him secondhand? In any case, whether it be truth or just fiction, I enjoyed this book from start to finish. The backdrops of Italy paint gorgeous backdrops for the pain of betrayal, the discovery of love, and the rediscovery of desire. In fact, this book addresses really difficult questions that people could argue over for years upon decades upon eons: "In a loveless marriage, is it wrong to feel desire and love for someone other than your spouse?"... "Is that really what God wants for us?" - or rather, "What does God care about more, honoring marital vows, or following your heart?"
In truth, life is not black and white. Instead, it is many shades of gray... and if you are lucky, you find the kind of love that turns your Kansas into Oz - a world of technicolor. Everyone spends a lifetime searching for it; some find it, others only dream of it. What is in our hearts is only for God to truly know; we cannot judge others because we cannot enter that place in another person. Would I do the same as Eliana, were I in her place? I don't know. I can't know, because I've never been in that situation.
The fact that a "mere romance novel" can produce such profound (even theological) questions is a statement of its true character. A beautiful story, full of moments so beautiful that only Italy can hold them... and moments so incredibly tragic that you question, like Eliana, how you can go on.
No spoilers here. But turn the page, and then turn again. For you never know what awaits you in the next chapter.
In truth, life is not black and white. Instead, it is many shades of gray... and if you are lucky, you find the kind of love that turns your Kansas into Oz - a world of technicolor. Everyone spends a lifetime searching for it; some find it, others only dream of it. What is in our hearts is only for God to truly know; we cannot judge others because we cannot enter that place in another person. Would I do the same as Eliana, were I in her place? I don't know. I can't know, because I've never been in that situation.
The fact that a "mere romance novel" can produce such profound (even theological) questions is a statement of its true character. A beautiful story, full of moments so beautiful that only Italy can hold them... and moments so incredibly tragic that you question, like Eliana, how you can go on.
No spoilers here. But turn the page, and then turn again. For you never know what awaits you in the next chapter.
December 10, 2008
For what it was meant to offer, this book delivers an entertaining read. I loved Richard Paul Evans' descriptions of Italy - the food, the museums, the scenery. It made me remember my own experiences in Italy and really captured the culture. I thought the love story was in many ways well done. However, I thought that Eliana's relationship with Ross was inappropriate even if her husband was a jerk. Therefore, I could not fully enjoy the main story of the novel. Overall, though, I thought this book was a good read.
January 20, 2010
This was a book club read. It was a great, heart-wrenching love story. I did struggle with the fact that Eliana was married. However, my heart went out to her, being married to such a dirtbag. The setting of Florence was wonderful and beautifully described. I want to pull out my scrapbooks and look at pictures of Florence. The Uffizzi is such an amazing gallery. I could have handled more description of the city, but I still loved it. It was a great ending and resolve.
March 11, 2017
So this book. I hate to say it but the story did little for me. I genuinely have a hard time dealing with people falling for other people while they are still married. I get why Eliana couldn't get divorced but why not just be friends with Ross?
Also, close to the end it just felt like it was just rushed.
I give it a 2.5 star.
I will, however, keep reading Richard Paul Evans' books. I like his writing style too much lol
Also, close to the end it just felt like it was just rushed.
I give it a 2.5 star.
I will, however, keep reading Richard Paul Evans' books. I like his writing style too much lol
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