PROMISES TO KEEP is the second in a series called Savannah Skies and returns us to Tybee Island off the Georgia coast, where we left off from the first book, PROMISES OF THE HEART. I greatly enjoyed that story about Macey Lindstrom and was happy to revisit that character in PROMISES TO KEEP. Our main guide is Maeve Lindstrom, a thirtysomething lady working in Willow Pond Senior Care. This is a carefully renovated and repurposed mansion on lakeside property, and I shudder to think what it must cost to join this assisted living facility.

Gage Tennyson is a country lad, from a famous local dairy farm. Sadly, when he wanted to follow artistic paths, his father was outraged, and they have never been on good terms since. This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I would think that a web designer and logo poster creator would be extremely useful to the business. Art is all for marketing these days. Gage works for the Lindstrom family as a carpenter, and Macey's younger sister Maeve catches his eye. They’re a similar age, unattached, but where Maeve has been casually renting places for a decade, Gage is tired of moving and wants to buy somewhere on the lake. Maybe they should move in together. Does this have to mean opening up about their family pasts? Well, I think no. Your personal life is private and while it can help to talk out trauma, nobody is owed information about your close relatives. For all Maeve knew, she and Gage were not going to remain an item, as they never discussed marriage.

A great deal of backstory is scattered through the book, echoed by the elder folks reminiscing to anyone who will listen. Animal lovers will find dogs, chickens and more. If you want a gentle tale of how it used to be, plus a lot of detail about daily lives and some formal occasions, you’ll get along fine with the good folks. We have lived through such changes in the past year that many people will just want to sit and read about how we used to live. With several alternating viewpoints and family members, the tale could get confusing if you put it down and come back a few times. The nicest sub-plot for me concerns a young lad keen to buy and restore a vintage car; this is easy to keep track of, nicely linking people and places, because of the car. I kept forgetting how old Maeve and Gage were, because their conduct and fascination with Facebook made them much more like twentysomethings.

Nan Rossiter has a third book promised for us, so if this layered contemporary romance PROMISES TO KEEP sounds enjoyable, with multi-generation characters, start with the first book and keep reading.

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