"Promise of Love" [American title of "Purposes of Love"] is a first novel about first love, and possesses the rich, heady quality of the excitement of discovery of emotions and personalities…. With a fluid technique rare in a first novel, Miss Renault tells a story of emotional and psychological development which is engrossing because of, rather than in spite of, its familiarity.

In a twisted and tenuous way, "Promise of Love" holds the elements of a triangle. Jan Lingard, Vivian's brother, several years older than she, is a scientist at Cambridge…. The two are alike in many ways and it is not strange that Mic Freehold, warped by an unhappy childhood, should have his first emotions, snared for a while by Jan, deflected by Vivian. Here Miss Renault has handled an extremely difficult psychological situation with maturity and sensitive taste.

Though Jan is responsible for the attraction between Vivian and Mic, he becomes unimportant once they become lovers. The conflict between them is not Jan, but the unhappiness and bitterness implicit in love fulfilling itself in stolen moments. It is in the development of this theme that Miss Renault shows the hand of an artist….

Miss Renault does a splendid job in portraying two persons deeply in love with each other, aware of their physical and intellectual oneness, eager to give the best to each other, afraid of anything that might destroy the beauty of what they possess, but powerless to wage a fight against the hands of a clock, against weariness of body and spirit, against outside destructive influences….

The crucial episode which separates them is difficult to swallow in the face of Vivian's love for Mic, but, that accepted, the tragedy of Mic's bewilderment and confusion is completely real.

The writing in "Promise of Love" is excellent, the portrayal of the principal characters convincing and moving, the description of life in an English hospital interesting, the narrative swift and dramatic. In the hands of a lesser artist the novel might have been sensational and melodramatic. Miss Renault makes it a sensitive picture of two persons of courage and integrity who seek to make the fulfillment of love as fair as its promise.