Book Review: Not for the Faint of Heart by Lex Croucher

Robin Hood's granddaughter, Mariel, tries to lead her own band of Merry Men in the footsteps of her legacy family, but a rural, quirky healer named Clemence and a reality these backwoods heroes have been avoiding may throw a wrench in her plans for redemption.

Ever since reading Lex Croucher's Gwen and Art are Not in Love, I have been dying to get to the ARC for Not for the Faint of Heart. This author seems to be reviving all of my childhood obsessions- first the tales of King Arthur, and now, the world of Robin Hood. You may have first been acquainted with Keira Knightly in Pirates of the Caribbean or the Star Wars prequels alongside Natalie Portman, but I knew her from a little old Disney movie called Princess of Thieves, and I was OBSESSED. I recently found a copy and rewatched it, and man, oh man- all the nostalgia points hit that spot in my heart jussssst right. Knightly was an EXCELLENT daughter of Robin Hood, the Robin Hood/Will Scarlet dynamic was dynamite, and the movie didn't end in a crazy, Disney-ified love story, which I appreciated.

And the excitement continued with this book. The surly granddaughter of Robin Hood, Mariel, tries to live up to the expectations of her perpetually hard-to-please father, and when a mission goes wrong and ends up with her team kidnapping a chatty healer, Mariel goes into damage control. The ray-of-sunshine healer, called Clem by her friends, surmises the ins and outs of this little group's dynamic while slowly gaining the group's trust and shedding the kidnappee designation. Meanwhile, Mariel's father is losing his grip on control of the Merry Men, and when an ambush results in his kidnapping, Mariel defies orders in the hopes of rescuing him. As she leads her friends in a hunt to find him, she faces off against her nemesis, the son of Robin Hood's Sheriff of Nottingham, and discovers that the people of the Greenwood forest may not share in her and her father's vision for the way things should be.

Croucher writes a wicked grumpy/ray-of-sunshine, will they/won't they, kidnapped trope of a story. The found family dynamic of the side characters was undoubtedly my favorite part. I loved the characterization of Clem the healer, but found myself a bit annoyed with the pacing of the character development for Mariel. I adored Croucher's take on the Robin Hood and Will Scarlet interactions of the original lore, but disliked how the author treated a burgeoning gay romance with two of my favorite characters (trying to avoid spoilers!). And the scenes that take place underground were just mwah *chef's kiss* mwah perfection!

I give this book a solid 3.5/5. It was a fun, cozy read in a fantastical world that I love, and I enjoyed it greatly.