Jane and her family is somewhat unexpectedly moved from New York City to rural coastal town Goswell after relocating for her husband. The adjustment is hard to say the least. Between her youngest diving in head first happily taking on small-town life, her middle showing signs of school trouble, and her surly teenager, she has her hands full and that doesn't even mention the weight of her own resentment. Her one bright spot is having found an old shopping list from a previous owner and attempting to track the history of those who lived in their house before them.

Alice is one of those past residents and it was her list. In 1931 she was also unexpectedly moved to Goswell after marrying David, vicar of the small town.

Weaving Alice's story from 1931-1945 and Jane's current day story, the stories of resilience, community, settling in, and making ones own family fall concurrently together in a beautifully written historical fiction tale.

#arc
#Netgalley
#thewifespromise

The Vicarage

A thought provoking story of two women struggling with changes in their lives. The times they lived in and the challenges they faced. This is a story of how they strove to overcome feelings and circumstances they were faced with but emotionally challenged with them. They had to face their insecurities, their denials, and come to a compromise with their selves for their own lives and those close to them.

It is centered around a vicarage in a small English countryside. It is set in two different time periods with two different women facing very different but equally difficult challenges in their lives with the move to the vicarage.

Alice meets and marries kind hearted David the Vicar of a small vicarage in the remote English village of Goswell, England. She moves from her father's home to the drafty and large vicarage. She feels inadequate at twenty to take on the duties of a Vicar's wife and is very lonely and left out of the community. She is happy with David until the unthinkable happens. War is declared and David chooses to sign up to be an Army Chaplin overseas. Then things drastically change for Alice when she takes in a young girl, an evacuee from the city because of the bombing.

Present time Jane has a career and three beautiful children. Her husband and her have a lovely home in New York City. Then her husband takes a job in England where he came from and they move to the drafty old vicarage in Goswell. This is about as far from New York City as anything could be. Jane does not do well with the move. One day she finds a grocery list written by Alice the former resident of the vicarage and works to find out more about the history of the couple that lived there before she did. She struggles with the loss of her career, her friends and the convenience and hustle of the big city. She doesn't feel fulfilled as being just a mother. She must work through her challenges and find what she really needs to be happy.

I enjoyed reading this story and how these two women struggled through their different challenges. How one young evacuee helped Alice and how Alice and her history helped Jane. We each have our own challenges to face. How we face them and the choices we make determines the course of our lives and even those around us.

This book challenges you to look inside to face any challenges you might have and to realize that we are all just human after all and that whatever odds we might face we can prevail with dignity and honor.

I would recommend this book. The book was a great story, the narrator of the audio book I listened to did a fantastic job the voice was pleasant to listen to and very easy to understand. The author did a great job of going between the different time periods and the narrator defined them very well. The book flowed in a smooth pattern between the different time periods. I would recommend this book.

Thanks to Kate Hewitt for writing another great book, to Gemma Dawson Elizabeth Cottle for the wonderful narration, to Dreamscape Media for publishing it and to NetGalley for providing me with a copy of the audio book to listen to and review.

I have to say what drew me to this book at first was that it was written by Kate Hewitt. I remember her from the days I used to read the ever wonderful Harlequin Presents romance novels! She was always an automatic buy for me! Well, this story is very different but boy I can tell you she still writes with all of her heart and soul!

This book was originally published in 2013 under the pseudonym, Katharine Swartz. It was originally titled, "The Vicar's Wife" and it is the first book from the Goswell Quartet Series.

I listened to the Audiobook and it was very nicely narrated by Gemma Dawson and Elizabeth Cottle.

This is a gentle and slowly captivating story. I really could not stop listening. It's a dual time line that alternates between two women named, Jane and Alice. Jane lives in the present day while Alice's story begins in the late 1930's. Both of these women lived in the same Vicarage house but seventy years apart. Both of these women are also living outside of their comfort zones and struggling emotionally.

Jane lives in New York City and has been married to Andrew (an Englishman) for sixteen years and they have three children. Andrew feels the family needs a change of pace and yearns to move back to his beloved England. Jane reluctantly agrees. They pack up and move to an isolated tiny village called, Goswell in Cumbria where Andrew is originally from. In her new home, Jane finds what appears to be a very old grocery list from someone who used to live in the house. She begins to wonder about it. She tries to find out more about who lived there but is also trying to come to terms with her new life in England.

Alice's story begins in the late 1930's when she is living in Cambridge with her Father. One of her father's old pupils named David comes to visit. He is now a Vicar in Goswell and Alice falls in love with him. She is quite young still and marries David and moves far away from her father. She starts to feel isolated and lonely in the Vicarage and begins to struggle.

Ultimately both women are strong and the story is very captivating. It wraps up very nicely and I am quite eager to read the other books in the series.

I'd like to kindly thank NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for granting me access to this Advanced Listener Copy.

Two lifetimes apart, Alice and Jane reside at an old vicar's house. The house welcomes both women with cold walls and shatters their dreams for the future. But in a long run, the same walls of an old vicarage give the women strength to move forward with new life purposes, new goals for the future, and finally - find happiness at heart.

The story sheds the lite on women's life after a major move from the comfortable environments that they have known and spent all their lives living. Each woman struggles with their new identity as a wife/mother/homemaker. I was rooting for both women throughout the novel, and in all honesty - had strong doubts that Jane will make it thru. Alice's timeline was rough to read thru as well, but it made me so happy to see her turn her sorrows into something positive. I admire the strong and perceptive woman she grew into.

If you have enjoyed reading other historical fiction taking place during WWII, then you simply must read this emotional and brilliantly written story. It’s a completely gripping story of love, regrets, and harsh realities.

Thank you, NetGalley for a free and advanced copy of the novel.

4.5 brilliant stars! The Wife’s Promise: A totally escapist WWII historical fiction novel by Kate Hewitt was a very captivating novel about two strong willed women that lived more than seventy years apart. I listened to the audiobook that was narrated very well by both Gemma Dawson and Elizabeth Cottle. The audiobook alternated between each woman’s own story, one in the years that incorporated the years just prior to WWII and during WWII and one in present day. Their place of residence, the Vicarage, located in Goswell, Cumbria, was the thread that linked their stories together. The Wife’s Promise was the first book in this new series which is comprised of four total books including this one. The characters were well thought out and fit the two distinct time periods precisely. It was well plotted and executed and contained accurate historical facts that were incorporated into the storylines. The characters really grew on me and by the end I felt as if I really knew them.

Alice had been living with her widowed father in Cambridge when she met David. Her father had been one of David’s teacher and David had come to visit and chat. There was an instant attraction between Alice and David. Within a short period of time, Alice and David had married and she returned to Goswell, Cumbria with David to live in the Vicarage. Alice had a hard time adjusting to her new life as the vicar’s wife and she did not feel at home in the vicarage. It was old, drafty, and most unwelcoming. Alice was a mere girl of nineteen when she arrived at the vicarage with David. Their love for each other was very strong, though. Shortly after Alice had settled into the vicarage, WWII broke out and to Alice’s surprise and horror David decided to voluntarily enlist as a chaplain in the war. Alice missed David so much and prayed that he would be safe. At around this time, Alice heard that children evacuees were arriving in Goswell and that they were looking for people to take the children in and care for them. Alice did not hesitate for even a moment to volunteer to take one of the children into her home. She knew that David would have approved. That was how Vera came to live with Alice at the vicarage. Vera was twelve years old when she first came to live with Alice. She had been evacuated from Liverpool. Vera was not the easiest child but over time Vera and Alice became quite close. There was nothing that Alice would not have done for Vera.

Jane Hattan was a sophisticated career driven woman that lived and worked in New York City. She loved everything about her life. Jane had met her husband, Andrew at college and they had been living in New York City for the past sixteen years with their three children. Andrew was originally from England but had made New York City his home because he knew his wife, Jane, loved everything about it. When an incident occurred that involved Jane’s and Andrew’s oldest daughter, Andrew professed that it might be a good time to move to England. Andrew had applied and gotten a new job there so he pitched his idea to Jane. She was reluctant, skeptical and didn’t think that Andrew was serious about the move. He loved New York City as much as she did. Didn’t he? How could she leave her career behind? They needed her too much. Before she knew it, Jane, Andrew and their three children arrived in a rural town called Goswell, Cumbria and Andrew was opening the front door of what used to a vicarage. Andrew had found the place himself since Jane refused to go with him to England to look for a house. The vicarage was not far from where Andrew had grown up. Shortly after they all arrived in Goswell, the children started school and Jane started cleaning and painting the rooms that had been empty for so long. While cleaning the pantry one day, Jane found what appeared to be a hand written shopping list. Judging by the money denominations, Jane discovered after asking a few people, that the shopping list had probably been written during the years of World War II. Jane tried to imagine the person who had written the list and had probably lived in the house that her and her family were now living in. Her curiosity was piqued but that did not help Jane totally settle into her new home nor distract herself from missing her career and living in New York City. Would Jane ever feel at home in Goswell? Would she be drawn to discovering the history of the vicarage and who its inhabitants had been? Would Jane be able to discover and identify the person who had written the shopping list?

I really enjoyed listening to The Wife’s Promise by Kate Hewitt and look forward to reading the other books in the series. The Wife’s Promise was about two strong, determined women who were initially unhappy living in the vicarage. Even though their lives were separated by more than seventy years, there were so many characteristics that tied the two women together. Both Alice and Jane loved their husbands and families with intense passion. They both had to summon up the courage to make changes in their lives so everyone around them could enjoy the lives they deserved to live. Both women had to learn to adapt to the circumstances they faced. They both experienced hope and learned to live with the losses in their lives. Without any hesitation, I highly recommend this book.

Thank you to Dreamscape Media LLC for allowing me to listen to the audiobook of The Wife’s Promise by Kate Hewitt through Netgalley in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.

I really enjoyed the dual timelines that centered around two women who are going through similar events. I enjoyed the setting and the visuals the author created. This was a comforting and sweet book and I will be reading more from this author!

Kate Hewitt’s The Wife’s Promise is a touching tale of two bold and brave women, set in two timelines, but not dealing with anything as fanciful as time travel. Instead, it recounts two lives in the same house, with all of the challenges that each woman faced.

In one timeline, Jane is married to her English husband, and up until the start of this book, had lived in NYC, with a high stress job at a non-profit that she loved, even though it gave her migraines, ulcers, and precious little time with her 3 kids or her husband. She agreed to move to Cumbria with her husband because he asked, and she thought that it was his turn to live where he came from. Unfortunately, Jane soon found herself homesick and miserable in her new house in Cumbria. While trying to spruce up her new house, she did find a shopping list from around the time of the Second World War, and it made her want to know more about the woman who wrote it.

It turns out that Alice James wrote it, while she was living in that same house. She was happily married to the Vicar of that parish, David James. The second timeline was her timeline, as we read all about Alice’s life and all that WWII had changed in her life, and Jane tried to find out as much as she could about her and her shopping list.

This book does need a trigger warning, as so many people are sensitive to infant loss/miscarriage.

This book was poignant and wonderful when it dealt with problems so many women deal with.


Thank you to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for this touching audio ARC!

Thank you to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for the audiobook version of this book. Everything I write is my own person thoughts, feelings, and opinions. I am in no way affiliated with or compensated for my review.
I loved this book! The cover is beautiful too. I loved the dual timelines. Alice is set in England in the 1930's. Jane is set back and forth from New York to England in modern-day.
Jane finds herself at age 19 married tot he vicar. They have a good life together. They did suffer through a third trimester miscarriage of their daughter. When the war arrives Alices husband has decided he is enlisting in the war. He goes off to war and doesn't survive. Meanwhile Alice takes in one of the displaced children. They have small bumps in the road as she is 12 years old and understandably not wanting to start a new life in a foreign country with strangers.
Jane lives in New York with her husband and three kids. Her husband is from England and they decided to move to England. Jane is unsettled about the move. While Jane is prepping for painting in one of the pantries she finds an old grocery list. This list sets the stage for the premises of the book.
This is a wonderful book.

This is the first book in the Goswell Quartet, four stories linked by the village of Goswell in coastal England. First, you have to get past the awful title, which makes this book sound like a cross between a Hallmark Movie and a smutty book. It’s actually a dual timeline narrative between the present and 1931. In the present, Jane and her family have moved to the village from Manhattan. Her husband has a new job, her kids are in school and Jane is at loose ends and feeling alone and cut off from the world. She comes across an old shopping list, and desperate to make some sort of connection with the old vicarage that she and her family now inhabit, she forms a tenuous connection to the woman who wrote it. In 1931, Alice finds herself falling in love with a vicar from Goswell. She leaves her home behind to start a new life with her new husband, but it seems that her new life is cursed, losing a baby and then dealing with the struggles and privations of World War II. This is such a lovely story, I felt like I knew the characters personally. Highly recommended

Thank you, Net Galley for an audio ARC of The Wife's Promise by Katherine Swartz. This is a well written, women's fiction. I would have rated this 4 stars, but the MC, for me was detestable, selfish and somewhat narcissistic. I listened to the whole book, but being a character driven reader, I didn't like it much.