A Vow Made Twice

by Emma Denny

🐣🐣🐣🐣🐣

5/5 ducklings

tl;dr: Ash finally gets his happy ending!

A perfect ending for a perfect series. I’ve waited a long time for Ash’s story and I'm so glad I finally got to read his happy ending and watch my favorite grumpy eldest child heal in so many ways.

If you have talked books with me any time since 2022, I’ve probably gushed at you about One Night in Hartswood. It’s a lovely tale of Medieval queer romance with a happy ending that found me at exactly the right time. I had just upended my life and moved back to my hometown for a full time job that it turned out I hated. I was working part time in a bookstore for fun and one of the book buyers asked me to review the arc before the book came out. I devoured it, head over heels in love with the flawed, tender, lovable characters by chapter 2.

Ash, the eldest Barden sibling, made his first appearance in Hartswood, leaving hints to his past through out Raff and Penn’s story, and then Cecily and Jo's adventure in All the Painted Stars. I knew his would be a difficult story, one does not witness the death of their spouse and the horrors of war without it leaving some scars, both literal and metaphorical.

The very first page of the book is Ash and Oliver exchanging vows right before they ride into battle. They may not be wedding vows, but they are vows to love and protect and cherish until death do you part nonetheless. They exchange rings and everything. We all know how this ends.

Fast forward, and Ash suddenly finds himself the Earl Barden after the unexpected death of his father. This does not stop anyone asking when he’s going to get married.

Lady Agnes is a widow and in need of an heir and desperate to choose her own husband, rather than let her family push her to marry Francis, childhood friend with a cruel streak who disapproves of Agnes peculiar choice in clothing.

Ash and Agnes’s first meeting is less than fortuitous. Agnes, seeking refuge, goes hunting in the woods dressed as a man. Ash runs from his retinue and finds himself on the wrong end of Agnes’s bow. In his arrogance, Ash berates the scrawny man he sees and walks himself right into a deer trap.

Their first proper meeting is no less fraught. Ash recognizes her as the man he met in the forest and is mortified by his behavior. Agnes is terrified of his judgement and rejection.

Here we learn two things: Ash has zero tact and Muriel is the worst sister on the face of the plant.

Muriel, Agnes’s sister, sees what she thinks is Ash manhandling Agnes and jumps to conclusions, setting in motion a series of events that has repercussions that reach far beyond her sister’s marriage.

An attack on the road back to Dunlyn Castle leaves both Ash and Agnes shaken, but the bigger surprise than Agnes’s ability with a knife, is the identity of their attacker: none other than Oliver, Ash’s dead lover.

Needless to say, this leaves Ash reeling. The man he loved, the man he thought was dead, the man he failed to save, was alive. And tied to kill him.

Oliver had been injured and taken prisoner in France when Ash thought he had died. In the intervening years, he has nursed a hatred for Ash because Ash did not come to rescue him and couldn’t even be bothered to pay the ransom.

Oliver’s reappearance forces him into a bleak honesty with Agnes, whom he will not lie to and also fully expects to reject him. To his intense surprise, she doesn’t call off the wedding and even allows Oliver to stay.

From here, the emotional roller coaster only accelerates. Agnes gives a poignant explanation of how she experiences gender dysphoria. Oliver is scared Ash will leave him again, especially now that he’s married. Ash’s PTSD rears its head in frightening ways and he reveals just how bad his depression is to his brother.

This book touched on a surprising number of topics that I don’t normally get to see in books and that made me feel unexpectedly seen.

Agnes’s description of her nonbinary-ness was touching and painful and lovely. On the rare occasion I come across a nonbinary character in a book, their explanation feels vague or generic or it comes long after the character accepts and understands their gender. But the way Denny wrote Agnes’ experience was raw and perplexed and a little scared. Agnes has accepted her nonbinary-ness, but she doesn't understand it. She knows that she doesn’t always feel right in her female body, and she knows that dressing like a man and being seen as a man feels better some days, but she doesn't understand it.

Those days where the idea of the curves of her own body make her want to tear off her skin scare her, she is afraid of never feeling like herself, like she belongs in her body. She doesn’t understand why it bothers her and no one else.

She has bad days and not just because someone misgenders her, she feels it in her bones, and while I hate that for Agnes, it was nice to see it the page. And then when she finds people who understand her and love her because she who she is not in spite of it gave me so much hope.

Oliver spent so long hating Ash because he felt abandoned, he thought that because no one paid his ransom that no one loved him and he let that anger eat at him. And then his entire world is turned upside down when he learned that Ash didn't abandon him and he goes from angry to afraid that his second chance at happiness will be taken from him.

The hardest part to read was Ash’s struggle with his depression and PTSD. If you’ve ever gone a round with depression, you’ll know what that’s like. While heavy, I think Denny handles it with care, giving it the respect and gravity it deserves while keeping some distance from the reader in a way that I really appreciated.

Oddly, the part I related to the most was Oliver only having sight in one eye. I don’t often come across characters who have a sight impairment, let alone one who will joke about it. It was refreshing!

I want more nonbinary characters, I want to see more characters with disabilities that they both struggle with and joke about because that’s how I experience mine, I want to see more queer love stories!

One of my favorite things about these books is that it is not a queer-normative world. Don’t get me wrong, I love a world where queerness isn’t remarkable, but I read to escape the real world and sometimes queer stories of joy and found family and carving out safe spaces in a world that hates you is easier to escape to. It always carries an edge of rebellion, even what that’s not the story. Queer joy is rebellion.

I loved this book. I’ve been an Emma Denny die hard since One Night in Hartswood came out and I'll read anything else they publish. If you want a lovely escape, you need to read

.

Originally published: February 17, 2026