A Notorious Vow is the first book of Joanna Shupe’s that I have read, though upon finishing, I immediately went and bought some backlist. What began as romance with a marriage of convenience between friends turned into a beautiful story of loving someone wholly and completely. I cried. Twice.

Though this book is the third in the Four Hundred series, I had no problem reading this on its own. If characters from previous books appeared, I had no indication and I never once felt lost when dealing with any secondary characters. Please don’t let reading out of order deter you from reading this one.

Christina Barclay is an Englishwoman whose family now finds themselves in New York to escape a litany of debts. She mostly spends her days walking through her reclusive neighbor’s gardens and spending time with her cousin Patricia. She takes no joy in attending social gatherings and her love life is nonexistent, since her parents are scheming to marry her off to someone rich.

When Christina is cornered by a mischievous but very big dog, the pup’s excitement causes her to fall and knock her head.

An unconscious woman is definitely not something Oliver Hawkes expects to find in his gardens. He’s a man who enjoys his privacy and his self-imposed exile from society. Oliver is deaf, losing his hearing to an illness as a young teen. His disability brings him all manner of unwanted attention in public and, while attending a school for the deaf, he also felt ostracized there as well. Because he wasn’t born deaf, he wasn’t as quick to learn as his classmates and he had to fight the urge to use his voice. Additionally, Oliver spends a majority of his time in his greenhouse working on technology for a hearing aid.

I want to note that I have no experience from which to draw at the portrayal of Oliver’s disability. He does use sign language with his staff and it’s explained how he learned to sign in the first place. He also has a notepad with him to write back and forth with people who don’t know sign language; this writing comes in handy between Oliver and Christina because Christina often feels more confident expressing things on paper instead of verbally. At times, he does speak, but frequently remarks how strange it sounds to his ears and is quite self-conscious about it.

There is the use of ableist language as a means of demeaning the hero, but it’s always challenged and never defended. For those readers who are sensitive to these things, I want you to be aware that those kind of scenes exist in this book.

To me, I appreciated how much care was taken in the details of Oliver’s life. Things that wouldn’t cross my mind when communicating with others can become pivotal for Oliver’s way of communicating. For example, he stresses repeatedly for those talking to him to look directly at him so he can read lips to help understand what’s being said.

After discovering Christina in his gardens, Oliver and Christina slowly become friends of a sort, and when he learns that her family is trying to marry her off to an old, abusive, albeit rich man, he does whatever he can to get her out of it. However, a series of events leads to the only solution being marriage between the two of them.

They marry with the understanding that there will be no consummation, they will live separate lives, and they will divorce after a year. Christina will be given a large sum of money to travel or do whatever the hell she wants. But of course, they learn that a year is entirely too short for each other’s company. After all, think of the missed smooching opportunities!

What I loved about Christina is how gentle and shy she was. She’s a woman who feels very uncomfortable in social settings and being in public. Those closest to her know how kind and tender a soul she is. Here is a conversation between Oliver and Patricia regarding his marriage to Christina:

“I shall make a terrible husband,” he signed.

“I do not doubt it.”

His jaw clenched. “Because I am deaf?” he signed and braced himself for the impact of her ignorance.

“No.” Surprise must have shown on Oliver’s face because Patricia pointed at the closed doors that led to the dining room. “No one deserves that sweet and trusting young woman standing in there. However, I am starting to suspect you just may have a chance.”

There is a bit of back and forth when it comes to Christina and Oliver’s relationship, and I can understand why some readers might become frustrated with Oliver’s hot and cold temperament. However, I think his wishy-washiness is rather justified. Something that comes up quite a bit is the threat that Oliver could somehow be declared incompetent. Christina’s parents are looking to put his mental soundness in jeopardy because then their daughter would be in charge of the purse strings. Oliver has a greedy cousin named Milton who is also hoping to get his hands on Oliver’s money through the same means.

Though Christina isn’t fond of going out, he insists that she do so without him because he’s worried people will assume he’s keeping her locked up. He’s concerned that because he doesn’t live a life people view as “normal,” his wife will be living with some sort of monster. As a man who has lived so long having to think of his own self-preservation, I can understand how that’d be a hard habit to break. He pushes Christina away because he thinks he’s preventing her from doing things a wife would do in a happy, conventional marriage, even if that means doing things without him. But then he discovers that he and Christina are more alike that he thought and the stars aligned and the heavens shone down!

There is a moment when Oliver forces Christina to go to dinner with one of his friends, knowing the importance of her being seen following their quick and unexpected marriage. She is resistant and he knows it, but still, she goes. But then Oliver sees her leaving with his friend and he cannot take it. He feels like he’s throwing her to the wolves, making her dine with a bunch of strangers. He decides to muster up his courage and join her.

When he left society, he had sworn never to allow himself to care about a woman this way. Yet somehow, Christina had slid under his skin, with her shy smiles and vulnerability. All his resolve about keeping her at arm’s length and ensuring this marriage did not become real had crumbled in the presence of this one English lady.

His wife.

He could not lie any longer, not after last night—and especially not after chasing her down at Sherry’s. She meant something to him, even if he had not planned for this to happen.

Gentle fingers swept over his thigh to gain his attention, and his skin broke out in a fever where she’d touched. Her expression serious, she said, “I was very glad you came.”

“Was there a problem?”

“No, Mr. Tripp was a perfect gentleman…but he was not you.”

Oliver’s stomach jumped. He longed to savor this moment so personal. Most of their serious conversations had been concluded on paper, and he hoped this confession meant she had grown a bit more comfortable with him. “I am sorry I forced you to go, Christina. I should have given you the choice.”

A confession! An apology!

Even the smallest moments between them are so freaking sweet, like this little exchange following their first time sleeping together (as in sex):

She gave him a blinding smile and lifted her hand in greeting. He waved, his lips curling at the sight. God, how had he become so fortunate? She was breathtaking.

The conflict in A Notorious Vow is very much external as Oliver and Christina have little problems accepting one another, which is something that I loved about this book. Often, I’m drawn to an enemies to lovers scenario where there is a battle of wills vs. pants feelings. But this just felt so…wholesome. You just want to happy sigh as you dreamily say, “They were made for each other.”

The villains of the book are obvious. For Christina, it’s her parents. They’ve treated her terribly and though Oliver paid them a handsome amount of money after he married their daughter, they still want more. For Oliver, it’s his cousin Milton who hopes to take over the Hawkes’ fortune. Both enemies see a way to do this by getting Oliver out of the way by having him shuttered in an asylum. I wish there were more to these people; I like my baddies to have more than one quality than being bad. And the depth for me just wasn’t there. I’m just not on board with characters who only exist to treat the hero and/or heroine poorly and who have no positive characteristics whatsoever.

Regardless, this book is a gem. It gave me those starry-eyed, book-drunk feelings that were very reminiscent of when I finished my first Lisa Kleypas historical.

I want to leave you with my favorite scene:

Mouth gone dry, he licked his lips. “May I ask you a question?” She nodded, so he went back to the ledger and wrote, The night in the gallery, were you disappointed I did not kiss you?

Her brows rose slightly as she read, clearly taken aback by his question, but she did not look at him. Instead, she took the pencil from his hand and turned over a new page in the book. A bit.

Hear pounding in his chest, he wrote, And if I asked to kiss you now, what would be your answer?

Her fingers gripped the pencil so tightly while writing that her fingertips went white. She bit her lip as she turned the ledger toward him.

I would say yes.