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Of Threads and Promises
A deadly prison. A forbidden bargain. A love that could break them both.
Willow Calder only wanted to keep her sisters safe. But one night of falling stars rips them apart and traps her in the Hollow—a living prison where memories are stolen, bargains bind like chains, and survival means trusting the one boy she swore not to.
Toren Ashkell is the Hollow’s most dangerous prisoner, feared for the rebellion he weaves in the shadows. He offers Willow protection…and whispers of her lost sisters. But every promise comes with a price. And the closer she draws to him, the more dangerous that price becomes.
This Rumpelstiltskin-inspired YA fantasy romance is a slow burn, enemies-to-lovers tale of forbidden bargains, unraveling magic, and a love powerful enough to challenge fate.
If you loved the dark bargains of Gilded, the deadly stakes of The Prison Healer, and the slow-burn romance of These Hollow Vows… then you’ll be swept away by Of Threads and Promises.
537 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 16, 2025
3 people are currently reading
8 people want to read
About the author
Shana Dow
6 books46 followersShana Dow writes romantic fantasy for readers who crave emotional depth, magical adventures, and fairytales with a twist. Her books are rooted in slow-burn romance, found family, and fierce heroines discovering their destiny.
She’s the author of the Realms of Fabled Truth series, where five foster sisters are swept into an enchanted world—and into the center of a prophecy that could save or shatter it. Her stories reimagine beloved fairy tales with rich worldbuilding, heartfelt themes, and no spice—just swoony, tension-filled romance.
A homeschool mom of four boys, Shana draws inspiration from the beautiful chaos of everyday life. When she’s not writing, she’s probably sipping something warm, watching K-dramas, or dreaming up new ways to weave heart and magic into her stories.
📚 Whispers of a Broken Vow, the series prequel, and The Promise of an Unraveled Thread, a Rumpelstiltskin retelling, are available now.
Learn more at www.shanadow.com
✨ Follow Shana online:
Instagram: @shanadowauthor
Facebook: @shanadowauthor
TikTok: @shanadowauthor
She’s the author of the Realms of Fabled Truth series, where five foster sisters are swept into an enchanted world—and into the center of a prophecy that could save or shatter it. Her stories reimagine beloved fairy tales with rich worldbuilding, heartfelt themes, and no spice—just swoony, tension-filled romance.
A homeschool mom of four boys, Shana draws inspiration from the beautiful chaos of everyday life. When she’s not writing, she’s probably sipping something warm, watching K-dramas, or dreaming up new ways to weave heart and magic into her stories.
📚 Whispers of a Broken Vow, the series prequel, and The Promise of an Unraveled Thread, a Rumpelstiltskin retelling, are available now.
Learn more at www.shanadow.com
✨ Follow Shana online:
Instagram: @shanadowauthor
Facebook: @shanadowauthor
TikTok: @shanadowauthor
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
reviewed
November 21, 2025
As these are meant to be reviews for books I would expect most people to consider 100% clean, I must preface this review by saying that there are a number of mouth kisses that cover more than one paragraph or one long paragraph and that might be considered a bit involved, so proceed with caution.
{496 print pages}
Genre: Fantasy, fairy tale inspired [Rumplestiltskin], YA
Tropes: Protagonists soften each other, corruption, family disloyalty
Setting: Sort of alternate world
Writing style: Dual POV (with a third in the epilogue), 1st person, past tense
Tone: Gritty, tense
Character- or plot-driven: Plot-driven, in my opinion
Romance: Yes
Clean level:
• 7 mouth kisses
◦ 1 intimate, slow-building kiss amid intense eye contact and whispered hesitation; accompanied by gentle, steady touches
◦ 1 deeper, urgent kiss with hands framing face and hair, bodies pressed close; charged with long-held longing and emotional intensity
◦ Another urgent kiss with forehead touch, hands cupping face, and fingers tangled in hair; marked by desperation and warmth
◦ A tender, questioning kiss initiated after lingering gaze and gentle touch tracing cheek and tucking hair; ends with forehead resting together and thumb tracing palm
◦ Another tender kiss, beginning with a reverent kiss to the wrist, followed by a slow, mutual kiss marked by intertwined hands, gentle touches, and shared warmth and longing; ends with a close embrace and quiet togetherness.
◦ 1 slow kiss with minimal description of hands in hair and fingers tracing jaw and neck
◦ 1 with zero description
• 1 instance of lying together closely outdoors, with protective embrace and whispered reassurance, conveying comfort and safety
• 1 instance of man carrying injured woman, saying after “I like carrying you”
• Multiple instances of close physical proximity and contact, including chest-to-back, arm around waist, breath on neck/ear, hands on waist/back, and brief shoulder brushes
• Several brief lingering touches (fingers tracing pulse points or abrasions, hand brushing back) evoking warmth, shivers, and strong physical awareness
• Frequent near-kisses or lips hovering close, often paired with lingering gazes at lips and mutual eye contact conveying tension and vulnerability
• Repeated emotional and physical responses ‒ quickened pulse, hesitation, internal longing, and a charged atmosphere of unspoken possibility and complicated feelings
• Memories and thoughts emphasizing desire and closeness, highlighting tension between attraction and restraint
Sensitive aspects:
• Content warning for chapter 20 at the start of the chapter: “This chapter includes a coercive confrontation involving magical threats and bodily autonomy. While not graphic, it may be distressing for sensitive readers.”
• Another instance of light unwanted touch, zero description
• Mild violence, including a character burning to ashes from the inside out
Thoughts on main characters: Willow and Toren have been toughened by their life experiences and focused on their own survival. As the story progresses and they begin to care for each other, they begin to see beyond just themselves, to fight for everyone trapped within the system. In each other, they uncover what lies beneath that exterior: vulnerability, hope, and the need to be seen and cared for — and to care in return.
Favorite aspects of the book:
• Taking the idea of gold threads from Rumplestiltskin and weaving an entirely different story
• The character growth
The central message of the book — emphasized in the dedication — is that sometimes things need to unravel before something stronger, truer, and more lasting can be rewoven from the threads. Willow’s world begins to unravel the moment she’s separated from her sisters and suddenly wakes up in the Hollow, a maximum-security prison powered by magic threads and filled with mostly innocent people enduring a dystopian existence. Yet it’s only due to this unraveling that she meets Toren, who becomes an inseparable part of her reality, and together with him takes down the oppressive system. Likewise, Toren was betrayed and ended up in the same hellhole, which he’s managed to survive for five years. In learning to care for Willow, the facade he built up of caring only for his own survival and taking revenge begins to deconstruct. She infuses him with hope that not only can the enemy be defeated, but there is more to live for beyond that. He learns that human connections are neither just a tool, nor a weakness to be avoided. That they can be a source of strength, that they give life meaning.
Perhaps Willow’s greatest challenge is to learn how to wield her immense new-found power safely while accepting the weight that comes with the responsibility and the knowledge that it can easily get out of hand. She has to overcome her fear of what she is capable of if she is to develop the control that will reduce the risks of unintended consequences. The responsibility may be heavy but it doesn’t have to be a burden. She can see it as a gift as well, something that can unravel to build and not to destroy.
The Hollow is powered by thread magic, which feeds off of human emotion. The strength of the thread comes from all the negative and positive feelings of those within it. These golden threads are used to control the very people who are essentially fueling the prison. Perhaps this is why the oppression is so intense and indiscriminate — because of the levels of rage, grief, and hopelessness it engenders.
Willow’s prior foster care experience prepares her for this prison. She has been passed from house to house, always at the mercy of others who didn’t want her. The Hollow’s brutal system of “every man for himself” mirrors — albeit on an entirely new level — the harsh realities she faced throughout most of her time in foster care.
Favorite Quotations:
• The game continued, devolving into increasingly ridiculous dares[...] I had to perform an interpretive dance to whatever song Quinn chose. (She picked “Baby Shark” because beneath her analytical exterior beats the heart of a sadist).
• How far I’d come from that bewildered boy, torn from a life of privilege and tossed into this pit of vipers. They’d thought to break me, to remold me into something lesser. Instead, I’d thrived. Every extracted thread had been a lesson. Every punishment, an opportunity to observe the guards’ routines. Every interaction with fellow prisoners, a chance to build alliances and collect favors. I’d transformed myself from a scared child into the spider at the center of an intricate web.
• Something in her words echoed with unwelcome familiarity. The unwanted child, passed between those who saw utility rather than value. I recognized that loneliness—had known it once, before I’d learned to transmute it into power. Before I’d spun that straw of abandonment into the gold of self-reliance.
• I’d spent my first month in the Hollow learning to keep my head down, to disappear, while she was already stealing from guards. She wasn’t a pawn to be positioned; she was a player making her own moves.
• “You’re reckless,” I said. “And you’re controlling.” She crossed her arms. “If you want a puppet, find someone else. I won’t blindly follow orders—not even yours.”
• I was done being thread in someone else’s tapestry.
• But as I walked the familiar corridors of my prison home, I found myself already anticipating tomorrow’s training session, already deciding which threads of truth I could afford to give her next. If I wasn’t careful, she wouldn’t just unravel the Hollow. She’d unravel me.
• “You don't keep a storm from breaking by closing the windows.”
• “I don’t want this,” I said. “I never asked for this.” Toren’s laugh was bitter. “None of us ask for our destinies, Willow. We only choose how to face them.”
• When I finally looked up, the raw emotion in his eyes stole my breath—not pity, but a fierce, protective fury that mirrored something breaking open inside me. In the echoing silence, I finally understood. Trust wasn’t weakness—it was power. And for the first time, I surrendered to it willingly. And there, in the depths of the Hollow, I allowed myself to be seen—afraid, vulnerable, and undeniably human.
• I shook my head, bile rising in my throat. “I don’t believe you.” “Belief is irrelevant to truth.”
• I hadn’t known if we’d have a future. Now I didn’t know if we’d have a present.
• This time, I was ready to unravel the threads of his rule—and weave the beginning of mine.
• Because I could see it now—the pattern of corruption spreading from the monster matched exactly the thread-work Nyra had been weaving into the Keep for years. This wasn’t an invasion. It was a reflection. The monster was the embodiment of everything the Hollow had been built to suppress: fear, shame, guilt, and magic turned monstrous through denial and control. It was our shadow, given form.
(I received a free copy of this book from the author and am gratefully—voluntarily—leaving a review.)
{496 print pages}
Genre: Fantasy, fairy tale inspired [Rumplestiltskin], YA
Tropes: Protagonists soften each other, corruption, family disloyalty
Setting: Sort of alternate world
Writing style: Dual POV (with a third in the epilogue), 1st person, past tense
Tone: Gritty, tense
Character- or plot-driven: Plot-driven, in my opinion
Romance: Yes
Clean level:
• 7 mouth kisses
◦ 1 intimate, slow-building kiss amid intense eye contact and whispered hesitation; accompanied by gentle, steady touches
◦ 1 deeper, urgent kiss with hands framing face and hair, bodies pressed close; charged with long-held longing and emotional intensity
◦ Another urgent kiss with forehead touch, hands cupping face, and fingers tangled in hair; marked by desperation and warmth
◦ A tender, questioning kiss initiated after lingering gaze and gentle touch tracing cheek and tucking hair; ends with forehead resting together and thumb tracing palm
◦ Another tender kiss, beginning with a reverent kiss to the wrist, followed by a slow, mutual kiss marked by intertwined hands, gentle touches, and shared warmth and longing; ends with a close embrace and quiet togetherness.
◦ 1 slow kiss with minimal description of hands in hair and fingers tracing jaw and neck
◦ 1 with zero description
• 1 instance of lying together closely outdoors, with protective embrace and whispered reassurance, conveying comfort and safety
• 1 instance of man carrying injured woman, saying after “I like carrying you”
• Multiple instances of close physical proximity and contact, including chest-to-back, arm around waist, breath on neck/ear, hands on waist/back, and brief shoulder brushes
• Several brief lingering touches (fingers tracing pulse points or abrasions, hand brushing back) evoking warmth, shivers, and strong physical awareness
• Frequent near-kisses or lips hovering close, often paired with lingering gazes at lips and mutual eye contact conveying tension and vulnerability
• Repeated emotional and physical responses ‒ quickened pulse, hesitation, internal longing, and a charged atmosphere of unspoken possibility and complicated feelings
• Memories and thoughts emphasizing desire and closeness, highlighting tension between attraction and restraint
Sensitive aspects:
• Content warning for chapter 20 at the start of the chapter: “This chapter includes a coercive confrontation involving magical threats and bodily autonomy. While not graphic, it may be distressing for sensitive readers.”
• Another instance of light unwanted touch, zero description
• Mild violence, including a character burning to ashes from the inside out
Thoughts on main characters: Willow and Toren have been toughened by their life experiences and focused on their own survival. As the story progresses and they begin to care for each other, they begin to see beyond just themselves, to fight for everyone trapped within the system. In each other, they uncover what lies beneath that exterior: vulnerability, hope, and the need to be seen and cared for — and to care in return.
Favorite aspects of the book:
• Taking the idea of gold threads from Rumplestiltskin and weaving an entirely different story
• The character growth
The central message of the book — emphasized in the dedication — is that sometimes things need to unravel before something stronger, truer, and more lasting can be rewoven from the threads. Willow’s world begins to unravel the moment she’s separated from her sisters and suddenly wakes up in the Hollow, a maximum-security prison powered by magic threads and filled with mostly innocent people enduring a dystopian existence. Yet it’s only due to this unraveling that she meets Toren, who becomes an inseparable part of her reality, and together with him takes down the oppressive system. Likewise, Toren was betrayed and ended up in the same hellhole, which he’s managed to survive for five years. In learning to care for Willow, the facade he built up of caring only for his own survival and taking revenge begins to deconstruct. She infuses him with hope that not only can the enemy be defeated, but there is more to live for beyond that. He learns that human connections are neither just a tool, nor a weakness to be avoided. That they can be a source of strength, that they give life meaning.
Perhaps Willow’s greatest challenge is to learn how to wield her immense new-found power safely while accepting the weight that comes with the responsibility and the knowledge that it can easily get out of hand. She has to overcome her fear of what she is capable of if she is to develop the control that will reduce the risks of unintended consequences. The responsibility may be heavy but it doesn’t have to be a burden. She can see it as a gift as well, something that can unravel to build and not to destroy.
The Hollow is powered by thread magic, which feeds off of human emotion. The strength of the thread comes from all the negative and positive feelings of those within it. These golden threads are used to control the very people who are essentially fueling the prison. Perhaps this is why the oppression is so intense and indiscriminate — because of the levels of rage, grief, and hopelessness it engenders.
Willow’s prior foster care experience prepares her for this prison. She has been passed from house to house, always at the mercy of others who didn’t want her. The Hollow’s brutal system of “every man for himself” mirrors — albeit on an entirely new level — the harsh realities she faced throughout most of her time in foster care.
Favorite Quotations:
• The game continued, devolving into increasingly ridiculous dares[...] I had to perform an interpretive dance to whatever song Quinn chose. (She picked “Baby Shark” because beneath her analytical exterior beats the heart of a sadist).
• How far I’d come from that bewildered boy, torn from a life of privilege and tossed into this pit of vipers. They’d thought to break me, to remold me into something lesser. Instead, I’d thrived. Every extracted thread had been a lesson. Every punishment, an opportunity to observe the guards’ routines. Every interaction with fellow prisoners, a chance to build alliances and collect favors. I’d transformed myself from a scared child into the spider at the center of an intricate web.
• Something in her words echoed with unwelcome familiarity. The unwanted child, passed between those who saw utility rather than value. I recognized that loneliness—had known it once, before I’d learned to transmute it into power. Before I’d spun that straw of abandonment into the gold of self-reliance.
• I’d spent my first month in the Hollow learning to keep my head down, to disappear, while she was already stealing from guards. She wasn’t a pawn to be positioned; she was a player making her own moves.
• “You’re reckless,” I said. “And you’re controlling.” She crossed her arms. “If you want a puppet, find someone else. I won’t blindly follow orders—not even yours.”
• I was done being thread in someone else’s tapestry.
• But as I walked the familiar corridors of my prison home, I found myself already anticipating tomorrow’s training session, already deciding which threads of truth I could afford to give her next. If I wasn’t careful, she wouldn’t just unravel the Hollow. She’d unravel me.
• “You don't keep a storm from breaking by closing the windows.”
• “I don’t want this,” I said. “I never asked for this.” Toren’s laugh was bitter. “None of us ask for our destinies, Willow. We only choose how to face them.”
• When I finally looked up, the raw emotion in his eyes stole my breath—not pity, but a fierce, protective fury that mirrored something breaking open inside me. In the echoing silence, I finally understood. Trust wasn’t weakness—it was power. And for the first time, I surrendered to it willingly. And there, in the depths of the Hollow, I allowed myself to be seen—afraid, vulnerable, and undeniably human.
• I shook my head, bile rising in my throat. “I don’t believe you.” “Belief is irrelevant to truth.”
• I hadn’t known if we’d have a future. Now I didn’t know if we’d have a present.
• This time, I was ready to unravel the threads of his rule—and weave the beginning of mine.
• Because I could see it now—the pattern of corruption spreading from the monster matched exactly the thread-work Nyra had been weaving into the Keep for years. This wasn’t an invasion. It was a reflection. The monster was the embodiment of everything the Hollow had been built to suppress: fear, shame, guilt, and magic turned monstrous through denial and control. It was our shadow, given form.
(I received a free copy of this book from the author and am gratefully—voluntarily—leaving a review.)
July 1, 2025
To the author, a round of applause, because I just finished this beautiful book, and I'm in awe of how love can be written and described in such a fulfilling way, not only as physical attraction but as desire of belonging to someone and of having a greater purpose than just our nature.
Both of the MCs are amazing. Willow has a deeper character than just "the chosen one" trope; at first she feels and acts on instinct, which allows her to survive. Her character growth teaches her that to live and thrive, the need for belonging isn’t a weakness but a way to gain strength for our purpose, and Toren, with the classical character, calculating and cold strategist traits, I love his development with Willow, how even though he acknowledges the pain of not being the same person and the possibility of showing care and love for someone, that isn’t bad; simply it was a way to endure trauma or pain.
And the dynamic of both of them—loved it. They need each other at first; he's very smart, but she's at his level of thinking, so they can make each other grow and learn more. Then it's a choice, not an obligation, that keeps them together; it's a cleanse of the type of "love" that is shown nowadays in romance books.
Even though the story has a dark background, prison, and enemies everywhere, there's an amazing narrative flow between the main crisis and the plot development of both MCs; it doesn't get stuck on one feeling or idea, it simply flows with the context of the chapter.
I loved Six of Crows when I read it, so the dynamics of the characters on this book are very similar (it gave me a déjà vu kind of feeling as I read the first chapters), as is the sequence of plotting or solving the story's crisis.
I've been very lucky since my latest books have been great, and this one isn’t the exception, so thank you, Shana Dow, for the chance to read A Promise of an Unraveled Thread as an ARC. And if you're a reader that's looking for a twist on classical fairy tales with a touch of a survivor FMC and a cunning MMC, this book is for you.
Both of the MCs are amazing. Willow has a deeper character than just "the chosen one" trope; at first she feels and acts on instinct, which allows her to survive. Her character growth teaches her that to live and thrive, the need for belonging isn’t a weakness but a way to gain strength for our purpose, and Toren, with the classical character, calculating and cold strategist traits, I love his development with Willow, how even though he acknowledges the pain of not being the same person and the possibility of showing care and love for someone, that isn’t bad; simply it was a way to endure trauma or pain.
And the dynamic of both of them—loved it. They need each other at first; he's very smart, but she's at his level of thinking, so they can make each other grow and learn more. Then it's a choice, not an obligation, that keeps them together; it's a cleanse of the type of "love" that is shown nowadays in romance books.
Even though the story has a dark background, prison, and enemies everywhere, there's an amazing narrative flow between the main crisis and the plot development of both MCs; it doesn't get stuck on one feeling or idea, it simply flows with the context of the chapter.
I loved Six of Crows when I read it, so the dynamics of the characters on this book are very similar (it gave me a déjà vu kind of feeling as I read the first chapters), as is the sequence of plotting or solving the story's crisis.
I've been very lucky since my latest books have been great, and this one isn’t the exception, so thank you, Shana Dow, for the chance to read A Promise of an Unraveled Thread as an ARC. And if you're a reader that's looking for a twist on classical fairy tales with a touch of a survivor FMC and a cunning MMC, this book is for you.
June 21, 2025
This dystopian novel has hints of Rumpelstiltskin woven throughout the story. I liked the way it connected to the previous book in the series, while being complete and able to stand on its own at the same time. The world building was amazing, with magic systems that made a lot of sense! I loved the way the characters stuck together and helped each other on their journey in this story, and the romance was clean and sweet with only kisses.
September 17, 2025
After reading this book I immediately realized something... This book is a priceless jewel. The characters were perfectly developed, seeing the true personality of the people. The setting was outstanding. And the form of the writing carries you along throughout the entire book, preventing you from putting it down. Overall, I was completely satisfied with the read, Dow has truly embraced the job of a writer. I was given an ARC by the author and am leaving a review on my account.
May 30, 2025
I read the first book in this series and the second blew it out of the water. I loved the characters and was so invested in them I couldn't put it down. Can't wait for the next installment!
I was given an ARC by the author. All opinions are my own and not influenced in any way.
I was given an ARC by the author. All opinions are my own and not influenced in any way.
September 22, 2025
Clean romantic fantasy at its best. If you love those sweet yet in depth fantasy world vibes like old school Disney with more heart and intent and just... deeper and better. Then you'll like this book.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews