ARC Review: No Good Deed by Kara Connolly

No Good Deed by Kara Connolly
Published: July 18, 2017
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Pages: 352 (ebook)
Series: N/A
Source: Netgalley
My Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fans of Dorothy Must Die will love this reimagining of the legend of Robin Hood. Girl power rules supreme when a modern girl finds herself in the middle of a medieval mess with only her smart mouth and her Olympic-archer aim to get her home.

Ellie Hudson is the front-runner on the road to gold for the U.S. Olympic archery team. All she has to do is qualify at the trials in jolly old England. When Ellie makes some kind of crazy wrong turn in the caverns under Nottingham Castle—yes, that Nottingham—she ends up in medieval England.

Ellie doesn’t care how she got to the Middle Ages; she just wants to go home before she gets the plague. But people are suffering in Nottingham, and Ellie has the skills to make it better. What’s an ace archer to do while she’s stuck in Sherwood Forest but make like Robin Hood?

Pulled into a past life as an outlaw, Ellie feels her present fading away next to daring do-gooding and a devilishly handsome knight. Only, Ellie is on the brink of rewriting history, and when she picks up her bow and arrow, her next shot could save her past—or doom civilization’s future.

This book immediately caught my eye because there aren't that many Robin Hood retellings and I remember a couple years ago I was really interested in reading a retelling of that story and I never got around to it. I'm so glad I got the chance to read this.

This story different from a lot of retellings because it involves time travel, most don't have the main character aware that they're participating in the retelling of a classic story. I actually really enjoyed the awareness Ellie has about her role as Robin Hood because it provided a bit of comic relief. I definitely enjoyed Ellie as a character because even though she was in the middle ages, she didn't let her gender allow people to boss her around or tell her that she can't do something be it's not ladylike.

I also enjoyed the side characters, especially Will and James, even Guilbert. I thought all of them were interesting and I enjoyed that Will and Guilbert were flawed. I don't remember James having any obvious flaws and usually that bothers me because then the character is too perfect, but I still really enjoyed his character because he was just a really good guy. I'm not really familiar with the details of the Robin Hood story, but I don't remember ever hearing about a character named James. If he is a new character, then the author did a really good job of incorporating him into the story so that it seems natural for him to be there. If he's not a new character, then I should really go back and reread the story of Robin Hood.

I actually really enjoyed the fact that there wasn't really any romance throughout the book. There was a little bit of romantic tension during certain parts, but it definitely didn't go further than Ellie noticing that James is attractive and her occasionally thinking about that. It's probably a good thing that nothing happened there because that would probably do something bad for the future. As is, Ellie probably messes a little too much with the past

There were a few parts of the book that I didn't enjoy that much, one of them being the dialogue. I'm not historian, but the characters seemed to talk a lot like Ellie or at least they used very similar language, when they weren't speaking in french. It probably made it easier to understand, but at the same time it sometimes took me out of the world. I also would have liked more descriptions of the world and the characters. The story was good enough to make up for a lack of some descriptions, but I definitely wanted a more clear picture of the time period and the people that Ellie encountered.

The ending of the story tied everything up really well. I thought it was really sweet, but also bittersweet. It was a nice fast paced and fun read. I'll definitely be looking forward to more books from this author. 

*I received this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review