EVERY VOW YOU BREAK by Peter Swanson

The UK and US editions (photo source)

I feel so cold
and I long for your embrace . . .

From “Every Breath You Take” by The Police

So let me just say right off the bat, I am a big fan of Peter Swanson’s. I’ve read all his books and this one, with its title taken from the ubiquitous 1980s song by The Police about an obsessive, stalker-ish love (which some folks have retconned into a wedding song, of all things) is perfectly suited to the story. And as the song says, I feel cold and I long for the embrace of Mr. Swanson’s usual work because this isn’t it.

In Vow, our “heroine” is Abby Baskin and I put heroine in quotes because frankly, she’s not likable. At all. It doesn’t mean she deserves a ticket aboard the Crazy Train with a stop at Crazy Town but it’s hard to root for someone you just don’t like very much. I mean, it’s not great when she wonders what this amazing millionaire named Bruce sees in her and the reader is asking themselves the same question, right?  

So Abby has a tortuous past romantic life and she’s now met this amazing man who makes more money than God (but, of course, in true trope form, she is completely uncomfortable with being with someone so wealthy — girl, what are you thinking?  Sign me up!) So she takes a bachelorette weekend at a swanky place that he has arranged for her and her girlfriends and she has a drunken one-night stand with a guy that (you guessed it) develops a fixation on her. We’re talking that Abby is fairly certain she seems him at her wedding and he most definitely shows up at their honeymoon resort.

What should Abby do? Does she tell Wealthy Bruce, who will then almost certainly take his bank account and leave her? (Okay, maybe she isn’t super concerned about the money, for once.) Does she stay quiet and continue to lie? What? What?

As with most mysteries, sometimes I can figure out where the story is going and sometimes not. Although I figured out a few things here (and that’s okay) I most certainly did not see where the final (and extremely unsatisfying to me) conclusion would be.

I do appreciate that Mr. Swanson did not resort to using the ridiculous and non-organic plot point that some mystery/thriller authors do (Exhibit A: a serial killer is running amok in a small town. Heroine, who has just lost a friend/neighbor/co-worker to said serial killer, is grappling with this trauma/terror and decides that this best way to clear her head and think on it is to take a stroll by herself in the middle of the night down Stab Me To Death alley. This allows her to have a run-in with the killer, to which she will escape, of course, and also allows her to find some important information on the killer and/or to be out on the street when another murder takes place, making her now the prime suspect.) Ugh. I hate it when authors do this. Have the hero/heroine be reasonably intelligent and find a better way to get the information to him/her than having them be a complete idiot and act out of character.

But I digress. Mr. Swanson did not do that in Vow. He did have Abby react in a way that I would assume would be a normal one should you have cheated on your fiancé only weeks before marrying him and then have the guy you cheated on him with showing up in your life.

I will say this. The first half of the book was better than the second half. In fact, it felt as though maybe two different stories met and hooked up and spit out this book. That said, it didn’t stop me from reading the book in a day (and very nearly a single sitting.) So well done, Peter Swanson, on that front. But having read his other six books, I was expecting to be blown away. I was expecting to hate to finish the story. I was expecting to feel satisfied with the ending. I guess I was expecting too much because I did not. I was not blown away and I did not like the resolution at all. Granted, most mysteries/thrillers require a certain amount of suspension of belief. Heck, maybe that’s true for some fiction in general. But this was just too much. The “reveal” was a major WTF-moment for me and it just didn’t ring true. Sadly, when that happens, it basically spoils the entire story for me.

This book, in my opinion, is the Chinese food equivalent of literature. It’s good when you’re consuming it but two hours later, you’re hungry again and you can’t remember what you ate.

So I’m sorry to say that I cannot recommend Every Vow You Break, although I still consider Peter Swanson to be a good, solid mystery/thriller writer. Consider this one an aberration and wait for the next book.

If you choose to disregard my opinion or you have a gift card or something, Every Vow You Break can be purchased at major booksellers.

FTC Disclosure: The review copy of this book was purchased by me with my own funds. My views and opinions are my own. I was neither paid nor compensated for this review.