No Good Deed

Ellie Hudson is on her way to the Olympics. All she has to do to qualify is participate in a competition in Nottingham. However, a gold medal quickly becomes the least of her concerns when she gets lost below Nottingham Castle and ends up in medieval England.

Frantic to get home (and wondering if she’s suffering from a psychotic breakdown), Ellie is found by a knight in shining armor—literally. Her passport, iPhone, and modern education aren’t exactly useful for surviving in medieval England. Her archery skills on the other hand…might just help her face down a tyrant, join a band of outlaws, and help feed a kindly group of nuns. While the final resolution leaves something to be desired, this is a delightful tale written in a light and enjoyable tone that will leave readers waiting breathlessly for Connolly’s next tale.

Sexual Content

• When Eleanor makes a comment about James’s body, her friend says, “If you’re defrocking a cleric, little Robbin, you’re a bigger sinner than any of us.”
• When James puts his arm around Eleanor, she gets distracted. “It was distracting when I’d been trying to keep my thoughts closer to the center of the friend zone.”
• While at a party, a man doesn’t recognize Eleanor and she assumes it “because his eyes never got any higher than my chest.”
• While at a party, Eleanor is “checked out” by a man.

Violence

• Soldiers try to capture Eleanor. As she runs, they shoot arrows at her. When she is caught, she notices a head on a spike, which causes her to jump into the river around the castle to avoid the same fate.
• When soldiers capture Eleanor, “A soldier’s big hand shoved me between the shoulder blades.”  Eleanor then describes her condition. “My body ached, I had new bruises on my arms and shoulders, my wrists were rubbed raw.”
• Eleanor is sentenced for her crimes. Someone explains that the sentence, “means the accused is weighed and lowered into a pond, where God will judge his innocence.”
• In order to prove her innocence, Eleanor is forced to shoot a turnip off of her friend’s head.  The sheriff tells a soldier, “cut that archer’s throat if she deliberately misses again.” Eleanor is able to hit the turnip and save herself.
• When Eleanor goes into the forest to get an arrow, two men taunt her. One of the men tries to hit her with his staff. “Gigantor gave a pissed-off kind of roar—I barely managed to duck as the big man swung his staff at my head. The unyielding wood came close enough to part my hair.”  When Eleanor ends up in the river, the men think she is dead. She then gets the upper hand and is able to defeat them. No one is seriously injured.
• The sheriff’s soldiers go into the covenant and destroy the tables of food the nuns had prepared for the poor. They also take the nuns’ goats.  Eleanor thinks, “I hoped all three of them got head-butted in the nuts.”
• In order to get the nuns’ goats back, Eleanor gets into a fight with two men. One of the men was hit with a rock and knocked out. The other man was hit with a quiver. “The blunt hit Will in the ass, which had to hurt like hell.”
• Trying to save the nuns’ goats, Eleanor gets stopped by a Lord. When he threatens to take the goats, Eleanor shoots his horse and the Lord falls to the ground. Eleanor ties him up.
• The sheriff was planning on chopping off a twelve-year-old’s head for treason, until Eleanor intervenes.
• Eleanor shoots a would-be assassin and saves a life.
• The prince makes a doctor drink from a glass vial. The vial most likely contained poison.

Drugs and Alcohol

• Mead is mentioned.

Language

• Profanity is scattered often throughout the book. Most of the profanity is in the main character’s thoughts and speech. Profanity includes “asshole, hell, dammit, badass, pissed, jackass, shit, son of a bitch.”
• When soldiers try to capture Eleanor, she “ran like hell.” As she begins to run, she goes through horse manure but figures she was already “in deep shit” so a little more wouldn’t hurt.
• When the soldiers falsely accuse Eleanor, she thinks, “Those lying bastards.”
• When Eleanor tricks the sheriff, she thinks, “Holy Crap. That actually worked.”
• After getting ill, Eleanor wakes up in a convent, but thinks she is in a hospital. “Then I moved my head. God, I must have one hell of a concussion, because I’d had the weirdest dream about church bells and ministering angels.”
• Several times Eleanor calls someone a “jackass.”
• When Eleanor hits a man who attacked her she thinks, “Payback’s a bitch.”
• Eleanor describes the chief forester as having a “don’t-dick-with-me-attitude.” Later she tells him, “your boss is a rat bastard.”
• One of the characters says his name is Fitzhugh. Then he explains that “The ‘Fitz’ is the Norman way of saying ‘bastard of.’”
• When Eleanor attacks a Lord, he yells, “Give me your name, you treacherous cur, so I can dig up the graves of your mother and father and piss on their bones.”

Supernatural

• Eleanor goes through a dark tunnel and when she comes out the other side, she is suddenly in the fifteenth century. No explanation is given for how she mysteriously traveled back in time.

Spiritual Content

• After getting out of a difficult situation, Eleanor thinks, “I’d asked the universe for a lot today, but I sent up one more prayer: Please don’t let the place be too far.”