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The Promise

Belle, Book 2

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The Promise

By: Lesley Pearse
Narrated by: Sherry Baines
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About this listen

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of The Promise from the bestselling author Lesley Pearse.

War threatens to take all she has loved and lived for. When Belle Reilly's husband Jimmy enlists and heads for the trenches of Northern France, she knows she cannot stand idly by awaiting his return. Volunteering to help the wounded, Belle is posted to France as a Red Cross ambulance driver. There, tragedy brings her face to face with Etienne, a man from her past who she'd never quite forgotten.

Torn between forbidden passion, loyalty and love, Belle is caught in an impossible situation. Will the brutality and carnage of war make the honorable path the hardest one to take? Or will fate intervene and finally lead her to lasting happiness?

©2014 Lesley Pearse (P)2014 Penguin Audio 20th Century Historical Mystery Romance Women's Fiction Fiction War Suspense
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Beautifully read until the nz accent - as a kiwi listening this was terrible and unrecognisable as anything from New Zealand. Thankfully it was a smaller part.

An engaging and enjoyable story

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Being a Kiwi, I find the NZ accent is odd, but maybe we sound like that! Good story with great historic truth entwined, which I love reading about (especially with some romance included). I look forward to reading about life in NZ from 1920 onwards.

Read book one and two in a row, and now must read book three.

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Great story,

I’ve read the actual books but the Girl doing the accents made the caricatures in the audiobooks feel like individuals.

Iv listened to other audiobooks and you sometimes don’t know who is who in the book.

Have read 1 and 2 using the monthly vouchers but I can’t wait 22 days to get it.

I’m buying number 3 audiobook once iv wrote this review.

Iv read many Lesley Pearse books but going to get the collection on audio.

Highly recommend 👍🏻

Accents

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I could not understand the NZ accent and I’m from NZ which spoiled the performance for me.

Great story

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Easily the worst narration Ive heard for a long time. The unneccessary pauses and stilted dialogue are so bad that everytime I came back to the novel I thought my app was glitching, having forgotten thats just how this insane narrator reads. Maybe it was editing with the weird pauses mid sentences but it is SO distracting. Also, her French accent is terrible.

Lesley Pearse's writing, amazing as always. Excellent attention to detail as per usual. However in this novel there's some unneccessary recapping of the first book (which you will really need to read before picking this up as even with all the recapping theres a few plotlines that aren't delved into properly in this book) right up until the last paragraph!
Some stilted dialogue and over explaining of early 1900s social norms takes you out of the moment occassionaly as well as some in depth battle discussions about WW1, though these are interesting otherwise. She has definately done some major research for this book and the story is all the richer for it.
Great escape, if you can get past the truely rubbish narration.

The Christopher Walkin of Terrible Narrators

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