Promise Canyon

Written by Robyn Carr

Narrated by Thérèse Plummer

There’s an old saying: Whenever one door closes, another one opens. That’s
truer of Virgin River than almost anywhere else on earth.

After years spent on ranches around Los Angeles, Clay Tahoma is delighted to be
Virgin River’s new veterinary assistant. The secluded community’s wild beauty tugs
at his Navajo roots, and he’s been welcomed with open arms by everyone in town—
everyone except Lilly Yazhi.

Lilly has encountered her share of strong, silent, traditional men within her own
aboriginal community, and she’s not interested in coming back for more. In her eyes,
Clay’s earthy, sexy appeal is just an act used to charm wealthy women like his ex-wife.
She can’t deny his gift for gentling horses, but she’s not about to let him control her.
There’s just one small problem—she can’t control her attraction to Clay.

But in Virgin River, faith in new beginnings and the power of love has doors
opening everywhere …

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 28, 2010
• ISBN: 9781449867065

Robyn Carr

Robyn Carr is an award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than sixty novels, including highly praised women's fiction such as Four Friends and The View From Alameda Island and the critically acclaimed Virgin River, Thunder Point and Sullivan's Crossing series. Virgin River is now a Netflix Original series. Robyn lives in Las Vegas, Nevada. Visit her website at www.RobynCarr.com.

Reviews for Promise Canyon

[Jilayne McCormick Sinkhorn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Virgin River is one of my favorite series ?

[Mira Ruuska · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

It’s disturbing how the men in the last few books pressure the women in to sex, even when the women say no. I think writers should promote consent in their books when it comes to sexual behaviour.

[nancynova · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Clay signs on as a vet assistant to Nate Jensen, specializing in the horses that Nate wants to breed and raise. Lilly works for her grandfather's feed store, delivering the feed to Nate's farm. They're both Native Americans - he grew up on the Navajo nation land and she's Hopi. When she finds an abandoned horse that Clay helps nurse back to health & boards at Nate's, that puts them in contact often. Heavy on the family context - Navaho's and Hopi's were swore enemies and both have grandparents who follow some of the old ways and sayings, making for an interesting read

[rolsjunie · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This one didn't seem to match the rest of the series.

[pennykaplan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Newcomers to Virgin River, a Navaho and a Hopi, Chance and Lilly, fall in love

[dawn772 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Another good book in this series. Full of action with new and old characters invoking a range of emotions. Clay comes to Virgin River with his gift for gentling horses to work with veterinary friend and meets fellow Native American Lilly.

[mom2lnb · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I didn't find Promise Canyon to be one of the stronger books in Robyn Carr's Virgin River series, but it was still a pretty good read that had several positive points. Probably the first and foremost of those would be that both main characters were Native American. I think this is the first romance I've read in which that was the case. The hero is a bit more traditional with strong roots in the Native American community, while the heroine hasn't even visited the reservation in years, and in many ways, has tried to distance herself from her background. It all gave the story a slightly different flavor than the other books in the series thus far.Clay is one seriously hot and sexy hero. He has classic Native American good looks: bronze skin, a sculpted body from working with horses all day, and long, raven black hair that falls past his waist. Yum!;-) He's kind of a jack of all trades when it comes to horses. He's a vet tech, a farrier, and he trains them. Clay has a very special connection with the horses in which he can sort of communicate with them psychically. I loved his relationship with the problem horse, Streak, and how he gently coaxed the nervous stallion into a trusting bond. He definitely has a way with the animals. One of the things I liked most about Clay is how he stepped up to the plate and didn't shirk his responsibilities as a father. Even though he was only seventeen when his son was born, he actually wanted to be a father to the baby. He fought for and won that right from the mother and her family who were ready to give the child up for adoption. He was a very involved dad for the first eleven years of his son's life. Even after that, when he went out on the rodeo circuit and later to live in California, he always kept in touch with his son and went back to the reservation to visit him often or brought the boy to visit him. Now, he wants nothing more than to finally live with his son in the same place. I think this side of him went a long way in convincing Lilly that he was a good guy in spite of her past experience with another Navajo man. Clay ends up coaxing Lilly into a relationship much the same way he does with the horses, slowly and gently, while refusing to take no for an answer. He's just an all-around scrumptious guy.Lilly cares very much about animals, so much so that she's a vegan. I love how she took time out of her busy day to save a horse's life, then build a bond with the abandoned animal. Much like Clay she has a way with horses and a special connection that draws them to her. After getting pregnant in her early teens by a young Navajo man who was several years older, Lilly is pretty gun-shy around Native men. She is also a stubbornly independent woman who has been trying to distance herself from her Native roots, and the traditional paternalistic culture. Despite her distrust of, and other issues with, Native men, she can't deny that she finds Clay attractive from the moment they meet. While I could appreciate that Lilly was afraid to get involved with Clay because of what happened with the Navajo boy from her past and because of her independent streak, I wish her reasons had been brought out a little more prominently. I just felt that her reluctance didn't have quite the depth of feeling that it should have. She essentially comes off as a bit immature, simply stubborn and holding on to the pain of the past, which ended up being the main reason that was revealed anyway. I'm so glad that her gay best friend, Dane, finally gave her a metaphorical slap in the face and some tough love (I was totally cheering him on:-)), otherwise, I'm not sure she ever would have given Clay a chance to explain what happened with his ex. Overall, Lilly was a nice heroine, but maybe not as much of a standout as other heroines in the series.I was somewhat disappointed in the relationship development between Clay and Lilly which is the main reason I knocked off a star. There just wasn't much in the way of getting-to-know-you or romantic moments between them before they fell into bed together. Prior to that they shared an obvious physical attraction for one another, but their interactions seemed mostly superficial. This made their instant trip to the bedroom the first time they were truly alone together feel a little too rushed. That first love scene, the only moderately detailed one in the book, was nice, but it would have been even nicer if I had felt more of a connection between them. Even after that, they don't do a whole lot together to really build the romance before things started falling apart when Clay's ex-wife showed up unexpectedly. The setup for the conflict was another weak link. IMHO, Clay didn't really have much of a reason for not telling Lilly that his ex-wife was visiting. Since he knew that Lilly was going to be delivering feed the next day and might run into the ex, you'd think he would want to warn her and maybe do a little preventative damage control, but of course, he doesn't which leads to a major misunderstanding. If he'd simply been more truthful and forthcoming, things probably never would have escalated to the point that they did, but for her part, Lilly should have allowed him to explain instead of locking herself away and refusing to even speak to him. It made her seem like the immature young girl she'd been all those years ago when her heart was broken. Not to mention, she seemed to be unfairly painting Clay with the same brush as the love who cheated on her and abandoned her when she needed him most.As with all the Virgin River books, Promise Canyon has plenty of secondary characters, some of whom get their own POV scenes and sub-plots. First, the town says a sad good-bye to a character who's been there since the beginning. This leaves Jack with a big responsibility he didn't ask for and half the town mad at him for not doing what they want. As always, Jack is the backbone of Virgin River and has the town's best interests at heart. Also, most of the main characters from past books rally around to get matters in order and hold an estate sale. A group of four women show up in Virgin River for a brief sojourn at Luke's cabins. Two of the women, Jillian and Kelly, are sisters who seem to be taking a liking to the area, but both currently have high powered jobs in San Francisco. Each of them will return as the main heroines in their own book, Kelly in Harvest Moon, and Jillian in the next book Wild Man Creek, paired with Colin, one of only two remaining Riordan boys still standing. The Riordan brothers band together to help Colin in this book after he's involved in a serious helicopter crash that leaves him pretty banged up. He's very surly about it and also gets himself hooked on pain killers. I have a feeling he'll be coming to Virgin River to rest and recuperate from all the drama. Nathaniel and Annie (“Under the Christmas Tree” from That Holiday Feeling) appear too. Nathaniel hires Clay to work for him in his vet clinic and horse boarding/training business, while Annie pairs up with Lilly to start a trail riding program for young girls in the area. Last but not least, a new young man named Denny shows up in town after being discharged from the Marines, following a stint in Afghanistan. He's looking for his long, lost father, but so far, he's just feeling out the waters and not saying who it is. I have a sneaking suspicion I know who and will be looking forward to that reveal. In the meantime, he's befriended Jack and will be staying on long enough to get his own book, Bring Me Home for Christmas. There are times when I wish Robyn Carr would dig into her characters a little deeper, and Promise Canyon was one of those books. It had some great characters, but I didn't feel like I got to know them as well as I would have liked. She engages in quite a bit of omniscient narration which results in more telling than showing. Instead of this, I'd really like to see her get into the meat of her characters and allow the reader to be an active part of their lives. I've felt this more with some of her other books, but not as much with this one. It was still a pretty good read, but IMO it could have been better. I've been trying to finish the Virgin River series while staying up to date on her new Thunder Point series at the same time. Maybe I've just been reading a few too many of Ms. Carr's books too close together and need to put more space in between them, so I can appreciate them better when I do pick one up. Or maybe, it's just that she's come to a point in both series, where the ideas aren't flowing quite as freely, and therefore, the books aren't quite as polished. I suppose only time will tell as I continue to read both.

[mchwest · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

awesome trilogies by Robin Carr. great getaway reads

[books007_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This story involved Native American culture, horses, two people coming from some bad relationships finding love. I am glad I finished it but did find myself skimming through a good part of it.One of my least favorite of the series soo far. A lot of different storylines, lots of new character (I guess build up for more in the series) but it made it a little hard to stay interested.

[zosiacanberra · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What’s that, you say? Robyn Carr managed to write a book that doesn’t have a single graphic childbirth scene? Not even one little trip to Nurse Mel to have some lady parts examined? What’s the world coming to??!! Wow, isn’t this new Virgin River trilogy ever an improvement on past instalments. I’ve also read Wild Man Creek (the one that comes after Promise Canyon), and it’s even better. Robyn Carr is one extremely talented writer, but in the past her books have shown a major preference for medical matters over characters, and for children over romance. Now that she’s taken an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ attitude to the birthin’, lube, and the slightly disturbing aspects of VR life (such as friends getting together to give each other mammograms, and the menfolk of the town gathering to be present at any and every childbirth in the vicinity), the great aspects of Carr’s style can shine through. And you wouldn’t believe the glee I felt to discover God-awful bossy boots "I keep getting pregnant by accident even though I lecture everyone else about the correct use of birth control” Mary Sue Mel has – for the most part – kept in her box where she belongs. A Mel-free book is a very good book. If you’re new to the series, or perhaps have given up on the series, this is a good place to pick it up. Clay and Lilly are two brand spanking new characters. Both are Native American, and while I know very little about the cultures they come from, Carr seems to have done an excellent job with her research. They are two damaged people who have tried – and failed – with love in the past. Clay is an expert with horses (though I could have done without some of the implied ‘magical horse whisperer’ bits), and Lilly delivers for her grandfather’s business to the stables where Clay works. Carr’s heroes are always too good to be true, and her heroines tend to get away with being horrible; they’re never pulled up for it. Lilly was astoundingly idiotic a couple of times in this book (not many heroines are mean enough call the police on the man they love – at least not in a book marketed as romance!), and I would have liked her a lot less had she not come to her senses on her own. There was wonderful, perfect Clay, and I’m glad Lilly had to do a bit of backtracking – crawling even – to be with him in the end. Clay was certainly a little too wonderful for his own good, but that was offset with an interesting personality and backstory, so it’s mostly forgivable. He was a good guy with a hell of a lot of patience to put up with some of the crap Lilly dished out (call the police on me, and I guarantee you, the relationships over!). An excellent lover too, if that kind of thing is important to you… I often get sucked in by these Virgin River men while I’m reading, and then get to the end and think, “Yeah, right”. There’s some major female fantasy going on with the guys in this little mountain town, but I guess I’d take a VR man over OJ Simpson any day. What else I liked about this book was that we generally stuck with the main plotline. Other books in the series have had the tendency to go off on tangents…and sometimes never return. Second Chance Pass, for example, abandoned the main couple a third of the way through the book, and they didn’t appear again! Promise Canyon left no doubt whose story it was, and gee did it make for a more solid read. Naturally the absence of Mel’s infamous girly part clinic resulted in a whole lot of empty pages. So the author filled them with lots of information about horses. Now, I like horsies as much as the next girl, but I haven’t ridden one since 1993, and the first third of the book had too much detail about them to hold my interest. On the plus side, I tend to find Robyn Carr books to be good at the start and boring by the end, and this one went the other way. It built and built until I’d forgotten a lot of my initial complaints. One Carrism that stayed front and centre was her tendency to repeat herself. We are frequently given characters’ life stories more than once. Sometimes she repeats big chunks of information within the same page. Maybe MIRA polled their readers after a dozen or so books and discovered the average romance reader is more excited about “Will Clay find Lilly when she goes missing?” than “What model of IUD will Vanni choose?”. Maybe the author came to that realisation on her own. Whatever it is that prompted the change, may I just say a great big THANK YOU. If this is the new direction of Virgin River, then Halleluiah!! THIS is a series I could love. It’s got lots of good and has lost most of the bad. There’re plenty of good characters and there’s a nice romance at the heart of it. The writing is generally impressive, and definitely engrossing. It’s not going to change my life, but it makes for a cosy few hours of reading. Great stuff.