and then I started reading and hit this sentence: "Even in early winter, the trees were packed so closely that it posed a near impassable barrier, despite so many of them lacking their leaves. This book stays true to historical views but isn't going to overly highlight those bad things every step of the way because I think this is meant to feel warm and cozy, like the love these two men begin to realize they share feels.

Things really picked up at the end, though, and I think the ending was the strongest part of this book, actually. I haven’t read a good historical romance in a while, so I was excited to throw myself into One Night in Hartswood.What I didn't like: I loved the slow burn, but I would have loved to see just a touch more romance/spice. What made this story so enjoyable was the alternating POV, I loved getting the inner thoughts of both men. HNS Awards have helped discover and launch the author careers of Michel Faber, Ruth Downie, Hilary Green, Martin Sutton, Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott, Nikki Marmery, Margaret Skea, Warwick Cairns, Katherine Mezzacappa and Elizabeth Macneal. I adored everything about this book, the travel companion trope, the slow burn, the humour- it was perfect!

How their love shone in the face of strife was one of the most emotional parts for me, and I was so relieved to see it all work out in their favor in the end. Penn, the groom to be, is suffocating and does not want to be married, let alone to a woman and bails. It would have been nice to have a deeper sense of place and time, but in a romance, granted, but it is faithful to the tropes promised by the package. With both Raff and Penn, their lies are found out by other people recognizing them, not because they owned up to their lies and just told each other. A heart-wrenching, spellbinding love story, and I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough to find out if Raff and Penn would get their happy ever after.Raff is restless, unsatisfied with his life as a younger son, and straining against his responsibilities. He's been told he's a terrible heir and would make a terrible Earl but he seems to have done alright in my opinion. It was a light read suited best for when one is in the mood to experience a historical AU mistaken identity gay romance. Penn, by contrast, is so adrift at the beginning that to see how far he had come in the epilogue all but brought a tear to my eye.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this, since the blurb is pretty bare-bones, but oh my gosh I am in love with everything it delivered.The day before they're to be wed, Penn sneaks out into the Hartswood forest to kind of get one last night to be on his own.

Sometimes in historical romances they are written in a way that takes you longer to figure out what’s happening just because the prose is dense and unbending. I don't tend to like books with historical settings, but Denny's debut novel had an intriguing premise (and an adorable cover), so I decided to give it a try - and I'm so glad I did!

Dogs who live around horses generally learn quickly to stay out of range, because, as my friend the farmer put it, one or two kicks or bites generally suffice to teach the lesson. Could authors take two minutes to look up the anatomy of the shoulder before deciding that it's a good place to inflict a wound survivable when the victim goes days and days without treatment? The setting with them traveling together while they get to know each other better was very romantic and helped us readers become attached to both characters.