This book was incredible! It was the perfect balance of romance, political intrigue, and adventure. While Penn and Raff have one perfect night in Hartswood, their story has barely begun and it takes months worth of longing gazes for them to be truthful with eachother and themselves. For fans of Red, White, and Royal Blue with a touch more adventure- this is for you!



Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with this book in exchange for an honest review.

Over all, One Night in Hartswood is a heartwarming queer historical romance and I enjoyed reading it.

I felt the historical accuracy wasn't completely there, but I personally didn't mind it too much, as I enjoy reading about accepting families and that's sadly hardly possible when you're historically completely accurate.

The side characters were amazing, I especially loved Ash, but the others (like Jo, Cecily) were also lovable and I enjoyed reading about them.

Raff and Penn, the main characters, were a little bit flat, but I liked them still.
Penn seemed younger than he actually was, inexperienced and very dependent of Raff, not to the point where it was uncomfortable for me but I noticed it anyways.
I know it is a very common trope having one 'experienced, older' part and one inexperienced, young part in a relationship, but it isn't something I normally like.
The romance between them was healthy, not toxic or based on power dynamics and the plot didn't overuse misunderstandings and lies to try and make the story more interesting. It was still fast paced and therefore not boring. It was easy to follow, and not too foreseeable.
It took a little to get used to the writing style, but i really enjoyed it in the end.

Thank you for the free ARC!

I want to preface this by saying I think that Emma Denny has a lot of potential as a writer. That said, this book just didn't work for me. It felt almost like a plot outline than a fully-realized story. There was a lot of moving from place to place, eating, sleeping, and assorted random encounters, but not a lot of character development. Since both Penn and Raff were lying about who they were for most of the book, it was hard for me to believe they were forming a serious attachment, and the agonizing about the deception became tedious. And once both their secrets were out, I was very disappointed in how Raff handled his ||feelings of betrayal. He had been just as dishonest with Penn, which he conveniently forgot about till reminded by Ash. Raff also knew Penn had been seriously abused, yet struggled to understand that Penn had much better practical and emotional reasons to lie than Raff did||. Some of the plot elements felt overdramatized in a way that would make more sense in a movie, such as <spoiler>Raff chasing Penn for days and riding up to the keep just as Penn was being dragged inside</spoiler>. There were opportunities for more complex political issues to be explored--I was hoping ||Penn's father was holding Raff's father hostage, and they'd have to come retrieve him||--but those were dismissed in favor of less complicated or believable ones, like ||Penn suddenly finding he is both brave enough to stand up to his father and also a brilliant political strategist||. I am fairly certain that the throwaway references to ||Oliver were intended to set up a book for Ash, but including almost nothing about him, when his existence clearly impacted Raff and Ash in a way that's relevant to Raff's feelings about Penn,|| was a wasted opportunity. I expect Denny may not have wanted to give away too much of what will presumably be Ash's book. The ||correspondence between Jo and Lily|| was a bit more deftly handled. Overall, I would definitely consider reading another book by this author, but this one was only ok for me.

Loved Penn and Ash as individual characters and their relationship. The longing and pining between them was everything. Also appreciated how it dealt with heavy topics, but was still a soft and enjoyable read. Can’t wait to get the physical copy of this!

Enjoyed this historical romance. I did make the mistake of thinking I was reading a YA romance and thought it was quite spicy but then I realized it was an adult romance novel and that made more sense. But the romance was very sweet and the characters were all fully developed and interesting.

Very much enjoyed this book! First, I was very happy that this was a queer historical romance set in the Middle Ages, as this seems to be a less common setting for queer historical romance.

I really enjoyed reading about Penn and Raff fall in love. I thought it was very sweet and that they had good chemistry as characters and that their love was believable.

I really liked Penn and Raff's growth throughout the book, both individually and together. Likewise, I thought that Penn especially had an excellent arc. I would have liked a tad more about Raff, however, in general. The side characters were also very likeable.

The only reason I didn't give it a 5-star rating was because it read a bit too much like a fanfiction would in terms of writing style. Otherwise, I liked it :)

This was fanciful and heartwarming, I really enjoyed it. Raff is the aimless younger son of an Earl, trying to find his place in the world. While attending his sister’s betrothal celebration, he meets a mysterious man in the woods and they share a kiss. When his sister’s fiancé disappears, Raff stumbles upon the same man again and offers to help him escape, not knowing he’s aiding his sister’s runaway intended. As they travel, they fall in love but have to deal with the lies they’ve told each other as well as their respective families.

I normally don’t enjoy when characters keep secrets for too long, but this worked ok for me as they were both keeping their identities secret for part of the story. Both characters were so deep and relatable - Raff’s initial caution and respect and then his joyful love, and Penn’s fear and eventual bravery in standing up to his father.

The side characters were also great, especially Raff’s siblings. I hope we see more of Lily and Ash!

Where should I start? How about with the optimism I felt when the epigraph was a quotation from Euripides as translated by Anne Carson?

... Though there was that niggling doubt: Which play by Euripides? Carson has translated several, so why, Emma Denny, are you not distinguishing?

But optimism flagged only briefly, as I reminded myself that Freya Marske blurbed this. Freya Marske!

... and then I started reading and hit this sentence: "Even in early winter, the trees were packed so closely that it posed a near impassable barrier, despite so many of them lacking their leaves."

Uh-oh. Look, I'm not making an itemized list of everything wrong with that sentence, because I have a lot to get to in this review, so I'll just point out that "it" has no antecedent and that the final clause is a grammatical mess. No, wait, I can't resist: "Even in early winter, the trees were packed closely"? Where does Emma Denny live that trees move away from one another in cold weather? Fascinating.

Shortly afterward, I began to suspect that Denny's idea of medieval history went something like this: There were castles. People rode horses and wore tunics.

- Penn's dead mother had "a collection of Arthurian tales." Funny, Malory's Morte d'Arthur dates from the 15th century and we're in the 14th; earlier there's the Alliterative Morte d'Arthur and the Stanzaic Morte d'Arthur, but those are poems; the dates for Geoffrey of Monmouth would work, and The History of the Kings of Britain does include Arthurian tales but is, you know, a (pseudo-)history of Britain from the year zip ... and would a 14th-century noblewoman have been literate in Latin, anyway? See, this is all finicky of me, except that it would have been so easy for Denny to give Penn some keepsake of his mother that didn't depend on familiarity with the publication history of the Arthurian legends.

What does it matter, you say. It matters because writers of historical romance owe it to their readers to depict the history credibly. And because one kind of sloppiness foretells others. (Who needs Merlin to make prophecies?)

Moving on, we have Penn and his boyfriend-to-be, Raff, displaying an utter lack of common sense in the mercy killing of a deer. This part is awful so I'm putting it under a spoiler tag: [The deer has been caught in a type of snare that has left her suspended by one leg, which is broken. I tried to make myself Google to learn whether this kind of snare works on animals as big as deer, but the images and descriptions were unbearable, so I'm letting that piece of fact-checking go. Anyway, the deer is suffering, so Raff and Penn are going to put her out of her misery. Yay Raff and Penn. Does one of them take a knife and slit her throat? No. They cut the snare and Penn attempts to catch her but she falls to the ground. With a broken leg. And then, after inflicting this completely pointless extra suffering, they kill her. (hide spoiler)] No lie, I was whisper-screaming at the page.

And the thing is, you don't need any special research for an episode like that. If you want to get fancy, you can spend 5 minutes looking at snares and what kinds of animals they catch, but at least give your characters half a gram of common sense.

Moving on. Raff's speech has a "Scottish twang." A Scottish what now?

"There would be no need to bundle together when sleeping indoors, dry and sheltered from the biting winter winds." They're traveling in the dead of winter. How warm does Denny think houses, inns, and barns were in the 14th century? And speaking of the dead of winter, Raff is feeding them by hunting the apparently abundant game. He has a knife and he lays snares, I guess? Anyway, his luck is apparently phenomenal, because he seems to get at least a couple of animals every time. Also, he's likely poaching, so it's a good thing he never gets caught.

And then we have the horse episode. So, there's this horse. It's tied to a well and a dog is harassing it, eventually going for its throat. A few things about this struck me as odd, so I checked with a friend who's a farmer and has long experience of both dogs and horses, and of dogs and horses living together.

- The fictional horse stamps and snorts but doesn't kick at the dog or try to bite it. A real horse would do both those things, especially when a predator was going for its legs and belly.

- The fictional dog, unlike dogs who live around horses in the real world, isn't keeping out of range of the horse's hooves and teeth. See above.

- Dogs who live around horses generally learn quickly to stay out of range, because, as my friend the farmer put it, one or two kicks or bites generally suffice to teach the lesson.

- It would have to be some dog to get anywhere near the horse's throat, on account of horses are tall.

Also, I rolled my eyes at how long the MCs kept lying to each other, and at Raff's delightfully accepting family ("Our Son: He's a Sodomite, but We Don't Mind"), and at what a dumbass Penn is (he flees his father's castle -- dead of winter, remember -- without taking a cloak!), at the fact that Raff and Penn keep traveling even in heavy snow (on, what, the excellent roads in 14th-century England?), and at Penn's father's mysterious passivity once Penn busts Raff out of the cell where Penn's father is keeping him, and at -- oh, this is a really good one -- the infected crossbow wound to Raff's shoulder which he somehow survives. He even keeps the arm. Like, please. Could authors take two minutes to look up the anatomy of the shoulder before deciding that it's a good place to inflict a wound survivable when the victim goes days and days without treatment?

The tl;dr here is that Denny has been historically and medically sloppy and given her MCs no common sense whatsoever. Add stilted dialogue and period-inappropriate attitudes toward women and sexuality, and this book is bad to a degree that's insulting to readers.

Lagniappe: The MC nicknamed Penn has as given name William, which leads me to believe that not one single person involved in making this book knows any US history. Fair enough, maybe -- since it was published by Mills & Boon, the production team presumably comprises only Brits. But still.

ETA: A commenter on my Goodreads review pointed out that it's 1360 and yet there's not so much as a breath of a hint that the Black Plague ever happened. And never mind that though it burned out by the end of the century, it first killed a third of the people in Europe. I guess I was too distracted by that infected crossbow wound!

ARC from NetGalley and I'm sure it's obvious this review reflects my honest opinion.

I liked this one but ultimately didn't love it. The characters are great and I was totally drawn into the yearning of it all, but the historical setting never quite felt fleshed out.

This story and the main characters had me from the beginning. A really beautiful love-story that has a bit of everything - royal family feuds, sweet sibling relationships, slow burn with spice, and a search for freedom. For those who both love the Heartstopper series and grew up watching A Knight’s Tale, this book was made for you (do take a quick peek at the trigger warnings though)!

Thank you to NetGalley for providing this ARC for my honest review!

I found this book to be really engaging and I loved the premise. I'm a sucker for queer romance so this story was right up my alley. I am looking forward to reading other books by the author.

When Raff finds a disheveled man in Hartswood forest, the last person he expects it to be is his sister's betrothed who is attempting to escape his father's control. Penn tells Raff that he is a servant and Raff helps him escape to the north while also concealing that he is much more than a tracker. Though both are lying to each other about their identities, they also cannot deny their pull towards each other.

This book is so so sweet, heartwarming, and really everything I want out of a queer historical romance. Raff and Penn's relationship is so loving and the scene where Penn finally allows Raff to look at his scars both broke my heart and put it back together. Their love is tender and so caring. I truly adored them together and this story. The spicy scenes also really moved their relationship forward and were truly lovely.

Though Penn in the beginning appears a bit helpless and wholly dependent on Raff but he really holds his own with his charisma and ability to spin a story, getting the pair out of trouble quite a few times!

Read this for:
- Cuddling for Warmth
- Alllll the caregiving
- Hurt/comfort
- Medeival setting
- Roadtrip
- Queer historical

Another buddy read in the books with @meggatzabookclub and I had so much fun and am SUPER impressed that this is a debut!

Thank you to Netgalley and Harper360 for the eARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own and I am leaving this review voluntarily. One Night in Hartswood publishes on November 7th in the US.

Genre: historical romance
Oxfordshire, England, 1360

Raff Barden cares deeply about his family, even as the second son of an earl, he’s taken on the mantle of responsibility when his well-meaning-but-irresponsible brother has not. The Barden family has traveled south, to the lands of the de Foucart earldom, where Raff’s sister Lily will marry the heir William de Foucart. But Penn, as WIlliam is called, isn’t interested in marriage any more than Lily is, and instead flees his father’s keep. Raff, a skilled tracker, offers to go in search of the missing fiance. Raff finds Penn, but believes him to be a servant who he had previously met in Hartswood, and they travel north together both assuming they are parts of a lord's retinue, rather than lords themselves.

One Night in Hartswood was gentle, tender, heartwarming, and desperate. I honestly haven’t read much medieval romance before, but I love the tone this set by starting in Hartswood, the King’s forest. Raff and Penn encounter one another in the middle of the night, total strangers, and take the risk to trust one another with a secret that could get them killed, even if they won’t trust themselves with their true identities.

At first, I thought Penn was going to be a bit of a pushover, but this proved untrue. He demonstrates his strength of character and of will as he becomes more sure of himself through the book. His ability to charm his way out of many situations in villages was impressive, and proves to be just as life-saving as Raff’s ability to track and live off the wilds of the forest.

I buddy read this with @stephreadsallthebooks and at one point she said “I hope we get sick/hurt comfort vibes” … and we certainly do. The way Penn and Raff care for one another in times of need was beautiful and tender, especially in the face of those who might hurt them.

Thank you to Harper360 and NetGalley for an eARC for review. One Night in Hartswood is already out in UK and comes out in the US 11/7/23.

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A review by you!
One Night in Hartswood by Emma Denny
adventurous emotional funny hopeful slow-paced
Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0

I loved this story. It was fun and soft most of the time. Raff and Penn are so worried about how they come across to either other in the most endearing way! If only they would talk! (They do, I promise!) This book deals with heavy topics but at the same time they are dealt with such care. Raff and his family are gems to this world and Penn is just a great addition. The ending was a little predictable if you know anything about certain court politics (*cough* thank you d20's a crown of candy *cough*) but I don't think it took away from the story. I'm excited to read more from Emma Denny.

DNF 28%

I really wanted to like this. But there's spare prose and then there's omitting important details, and this falls firmly into the latter camp.

Things I was confused by:
How long is the night? How bright? How can they see each other if the sun is down? And if the sun just set and it's about to be winter, why does it seem like it's suddenly dawn?

There are all these people in the woods who are supposed to be looking for William and they don't run in to any of them? Not even early on? Raff just happens to magically find him?

So they get two horses and it is cold, got it. But then it seems like the horses aren't mentioned at all (to the point I read).

I mean, the characters are charming but seem no different from contemporary people plopped into a vaguely "historical" setting. IDK.

This is a wonderfully tropey historical fiction with a world that feels rich and fully realized and a secret-identities twist that's both fun and impossible to look away from. It's missing the special something that would make it a favorite, but it's absolutely a read I'll recommend and one that will appeal to historical fiction lovers looking for LGBTQ stories.

Thank you Mills & Boon and Netgalley for this eARC, these opinions are my own. William is expected to be married, he’s supposed to marry Raff’s sister. No one in Raff’s family have ever seen William. William desperate to escape what his father has planned runs away and straight into Raff. The two keep who they are from each other, William going by Penn. Together they travel North. Can Penn escape? What happens when the two begin to develop feelings? I really enjoyed this queer historical romance. The time spent with Raff and Penn as they travel the countryside was super sweet and charming! A slow burn with a satisfying ending, highly recommend!

to paraphrase one of my favorite authors (hint hint the one blurbed on the us cover), this is pretty damn tender!!

genuinely, what more could you want than two soft men, who are oblivious to one another’s feelings. but who also refuse to admit to themselves that they deserve love and each other. no honestly, these two men are what kept me going through this story in it’s rough bits. i’m not a huge fan of lying for the plot, and while i do understand their motives. i think the fact that both of them were essentially forced to reveal their true identities (rather than choosing to) did dampen those reveal moments for me. but to see them essentially lie so that they can have that one more night with each other, it’s softens my stone heart a little.

while their romance is the truly the main driver of this medieval england set historical fiction, the pacing towards their happily ever after felt quite off. The spend a solid 40, maybe even 50% traveling in the woods, from one keep to another. that’s a damn long time for one: them not to communicate with each other about their identities! two: very little progression in actual the plot. and three: lots of repetitive scenes to occur. obviously, i understand that’s how it’s going to be in reality. but i think after the fifth day of “we rode in the snow. we spoke over the fire. we ‘shared warmth’ the stave off cold winter nights” it’s bound to lose you a bit. and it did for me.

now once events picked up, really at the 70% mark, it was much more easy to stay enjoyed. but wow, was it odd pacing even then. really, truly. i think a fair few scenes could’ve been cut and we’d genuinely have the same story

I really enjoyed the duel POV of this book, switching between Raff and Penn. The setting with them traveling together while they get to know each other better was very romantic and helped us readers become attached to both characters.

The thing I didn't enjoy as much is that their relationship was built on lies from both sides. I also felt the slow burn was REALLY slow. But it was so worth it when they finally give in to each other.

The side characters were great and it was kind of shame only Ash seemed to get fleshed out more. Penn's father was a delightfully awful protagonist in the story and had me truly rooting against him.

It was enjoyable to read Penn coming out of shell and finding his own talents and realizing he did not deserve his father's abuse.

Overall this was a fun and engaging read. I don't care that the end was a little predicable because it's just what I wanted in this romance.

Thank you to Netgalley and Xpresso Book Tours for the ARC for an honest review.

A really lovely historical romance with unique and memorable characters! I enjoyed watching them grow so close, and loved the way they balanced each other out.