In this unlikely love story, a tough Kansas woman with a long list of worries, Zee, crosses paths with Gentry, a knight—complete with sword, armor, and a code of honor—who was called to be Zee's champion.
Greenwood’s quirky, page-turning love story, The Reckless Oath We Made, is mesmerizing from its opening pages to resonant end ... Chapters told in Gentry’s melodic, medieval voice are hypnotic and haunting, and Zee’s chapters provide an exciting contrast. The Reckless Oath We Made illuminates a life of struggle in middle America and examines how incarceration, poverty and mental illness affect families for generations.
... a sweet, quirky family caper about a drug dealer ... You may not wind up loving LaReigne. (Even Marcus has a tough time loving his mother.) But you’ll love Zee ... Zee’s life is no fairy tale, but there’s something moving about the way she lets Gentry live in his version of one ... Real life hurts, but human interactions can work miracles — to some extent. As the fantasy elements of Bryn Greenwood’s The Reckless Oath We Made dissolve, hard work replaces the promise of a magic potion. Someone has to meet with lawyers, sign agreements and make prison visits. That someone is usually Zee, and as she sobers up, literally and figuratively, she turns out to be the hero of her own story.
Greenwood is unsparing in surveying the many obstacles Zee is up against—drug dealing and addiction, debt, distrust—and the inventiveness of the plot is nicely matched by the richness of the characters, as the unlikely duo of Zee and Gentry prepares for the battle of their lives.
