The Reckless Oath We Made

Get ready to call in sick so you can devour one of the most imaginative novels of the year! Its wildly original story full of achingly real characters will have you turning the pages like you’re competing in an Olympic reading event.

Zhorzha Trego has a world of problems. She lives with her gullible older sister and five-year-old nephew in Kansas. She waits tables (and sells pot) to try and make ends meet; she is in chronic pain; her mother is a recluse who has filled their family home with junk; her father died in prison; and now there has been an abduction that hits close to home. Enter Gentry, a neurodiverse young man who thinks he is a knight—he literally speaks in Medieval English—whose voices have told him to save Zhorzha. Together, like the characters in Greenwood’s last novel, All the Ugly and Wonderful Things, they will change each other’s lives forever.

Three words: What a book! I loved these characters in all their sweet, damaged glory. And you can tell Greenwood does, too. As soon as I started reading this book, I couldn’t wait to see where she was taking them. I will be 100% honest with you—it took me a page to get used to Gentry’s way of speaking, but then I found it added so much more to the story. This is an unusual, beautiful novel, and I was sad to see it end.

Zee is nobody's fairy tale princess. Almost six-foot, with a redhead's temper and a shattered hip, she has a long list of worries: never-ending bills, her beautiful, gullible sister, her five-year-old nephew, her housebound mother, and her drug-dealing boss.

Zee may not be a princess, but Gentry is an actual knight, complete with sword, armor, and a code of honor. Two years ago the voices he hears called him to be Zee's champion. Both shy and autistic, he's barely spoken to her since, but he has kept watch, ready to come to her aid.

When an abduction tears Zee's family apart, she turns to the last person she ever imagined—Gentry—and sets in motion a chain of events that will not only change both of their lives, but bind them to one another forever.