Working as the Sheriff of Notthingham is a thankless job when the Prince and the Abbot are bent on sucking the people dry through excessive taxation and it's the sheriff's job to collect those taxes. Then Robin Hood appears, stealing from the rich and getting into the hearts of everyone, including the sheriff whose job it is to catch and hang Robin. The sheriff knows it can't end well.

The premise for this story was very interesting, but the execution unfortunately less so. I did enjoy the characterizations. The struggle the sheriff had to go through regarding what he had to do for his job for the Prince and Abbot versus what he had to do to keep the people safe was very interesting. That struggle is probably the only reason I finished reading this, thankfully short, story.

My biggest issue with this story was the writing style. It was overly flowery as if the author was trying to prove their worth as a writer by using big words and as many metaphors as humanly possible. One of the ones that had me snorting with disgusted laughter was when the author called a sip of wine "divine fermentation". The problem with this type of writing style is that it reads as very fake, as if the author was more interested in the words on the page than on the soul of the book.

There was also a lot of telling instead of showing in this story. For example, one of the integral things that guided the sheriff's life was an ongoing tryst he had with a monk prior to becoming the sheriff. Instead of a proper flashback with all the desperately needed character building and emotion, the author instead summed up the scene in a few short sentences. The story lacked in depth, emotion, and anything for the reader to connect with because of that.

I really liked the concept of this one - a retelling of Robin Hood where the Sheriff falls in love with Robin and allies with him. Hell yeah!!

Unfortunately, this didn't live up to my (admittedly slightly high) expectations. I thought the plot wasn't executed well enough, as a lot of the characters' decisions - particularly those of the Sheriff - seemed to be a little odd, without any rationale behind them; I felt like the characters weren't written well enough to really understand their feelings or motivations. I also thought there wasn't enough conflict between Robin Hood and the Sheriff, which is vital in an enemies-to-lovers story.

It wasn't completely horrible, and it was still quite fun at times, but I'm glad I got it for free on Netgalley because I think I might have thought it was a little bit of a waste of money if I'd paid for it.