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Beauty and the Mustache
by Penny Reid
Publication Date: August 28, 2014
Genres: Contemporary, Humor, R
Purchase from: Amazon • Nook • Kobo • i
by Penny Reid
Publication Date: August 28, 2014
Genres: Contemporary, Humor, R
Purchase from: Amazon • Nook • Kobo • i
Synopsis
There are three things you need to know about Ashley Winston: 1) She has six brothers and they all have beards, 2) She is a reader, and 3) She knows how to knit.
Former beauty queen, Ashley Winston’s preferred coping strategy is escapism. She escaped her Tennessee small town, loathsome father, and six brothers eight years ago. Now she escapes life daily via her Amazon kindle one-click addiction. However, when a family tragedy forces her to return home, Ashley can’t escape the notice of Drew Runous— local Game Warden, bear wrestler, philosopher, and everyone’s favorite guy. Drew’s irksome philosophizing in particular makes Ashley want to run for the skyscrapers, especially since he can’t seem to keep his exasperating opinions— or his soulful poetry, steadfast support, and delightful hands— to himself. Pretty soon the girl who wanted nothing more than the escape of the big city finds she’s lost her heart in small town Tennessee.
This is a full-length novel, can be read as a standalone, and is the fourth book in the 'Knitting in the City' series.
Former beauty queen, Ashley Winston’s preferred coping strategy is escapism. She escaped her Tennessee small town, loathsome father, and six brothers eight years ago. Now she escapes life daily via her Amazon kindle one-click addiction. However, when a family tragedy forces her to return home, Ashley can’t escape the notice of Drew Runous— local Game Warden, bear wrestler, philosopher, and everyone’s favorite guy. Drew’s irksome philosophizing in particular makes Ashley want to run for the skyscrapers, especially since he can’t seem to keep his exasperating opinions— or his soulful poetry, steadfast support, and delightful hands— to himself. Pretty soon the girl who wanted nothing more than the escape of the big city finds she’s lost her heart in small town Tennessee.
This is a full-length novel, can be read as a standalone, and is the fourth book in the 'Knitting in the City' series.
Review
5 Stars
It shouldn't surprise me anymore when I read the latest book by Penny Reid and I love it. Beauty and the Mustache, even by Penny Reid standards, is something extraordinarily special. This book is a romance in the true sense. We get to see two people fall in love with each other and we fall in love with them in the process. There are definitely moments of the humor that fans of the Knitting in the City series have come to expect so I did get to laugh out loud with the ladies from the knitting group. But this book is different from the first four. It may sound twee but I laughed, I cried, I had all the feels.
This is Ashley's story. Just as she did with Janie, Elizabeth, and Sandra, Penny writes amazing women. All too often at the end of a romance novel it's the guy who really stands out, that readers talk about. That's not to say that I don't adore the men in the Knitting in the City books, but the women are wonderful, smart, funny, fully realized characters in romances in a way that we don't find as often as I wish we did. Ashley left her Tennessee home 8 years ago to escape her family and the small town in which she grew up. She has made a life for herself she is rightfully proud of in Chicago. Having to return to Tennessee to help care for her ill mother, she reconnects with her brothers and meets Drew, who has become an honorary member of her family. The beauty of this book is how Penny has layered all the aspects of Ashley's return home - the relationship with her mother and emotional struggle of dealing with a dying parent, learning about the men her brothers have become and rebuilding those neglected relationships, dealing with the memories and emotions of coming home to a place she was so desperate to leave 8 years before, recognizing, processing and accepting the complicated feelings she develops for Drew - and dealt with all them to perfection.
Ashley has always been one of my favorite members of the knitting group. I can't really say why, but I am always happy when she shows up in a scene, so her book was one I was really looking forward to. Penny's choice for making Ashley's story more serious than the previous books worked perfectly. Ashley has the soul of a poet and the depth of her story is a wonderful fit.
Drew. I love Drew. A Viking philosopher poet mountain man. Ok. That sounds like it couldn't really work but it just really, really does. He's a reader, deep thinker, Nietzche quoter, soulful, poetic to his core, fictionally handsome good guy who loves Ashley the way she needs to be loved. He's the kind of hero that makes a romance novel an actual romance. The desire, the internal struggle, the doing-the-right-thing-for-the-woman-you-love. Classic romantic hero.
The Winston Boys, Ashley's six bearded hillbilly brothers. Another aspect of Penny's writing that can be taken as a given is that her secondary characters ... well, they don't seem secondary. It's easy to give someone six brothers, give them similar physical descriptions and populate the story with them and some hijinks. By the end of the book you may not be able to really tell one from the other except by describing what they look like. Penny loves us, and her characters, too much to do that. Ashley's brothers, Jethro, Billy, Cletus, Beauford, Duane, and Roscoe, are all fully realized, unique characters. You know them by their personalities, their different reactions, their ways of speaking. They don't feel secondary. There is nothing filler or fluff about Penny's writing. Each character brings something necessary to the story and this includes each one of the Winston boys, all of whom I want to hang out with. I want to populate my world with the characters in Penny Reid's books!
The knitting ladies can't be left out of this because just as her brothers and her momma are her family, so are the ladies from Chicago, and their husbands. The ladies in the knitting group are, as always, there for each other. What we see now is how their spouses are really part of the mix as well. I think Quinn talks more in this book than in Friends Without Benefits and Love Hacked COMBINED! And Fiona's husband, Greg, even makes an appearance. Yay! There really are no secondary character, just characters who may not be at the center of things at the moment.
Beauty and the Mustache is a beautiful book - the writing, the story, the characters. I know it will be one of those books I go back to again and again to lose myself in it. Penny Reid as outdone herself with this one, and proven that she is a consummate story teller.
About Penny Reid
SEX! It all started with sex, between my parents. Personally I don’t like thinking about it, but whatever works for you is a-ok with me. No judgment. The sex happened in California and much of my life also occurred in that state until I moved from the land of nuts (almonds), wine, silicon… boobs, and heavy traffic to the southeast US. Like most writers I like to write, but let’s get back to sex. Eventually I married and gave birth to 2 small people-children (boy-6, girl-4 as of this writing).
By day I’m a biomedical researcher with focus on rare diseases. By night I’m a knitter, sewer, lino block carver, fabric printer, soap maker, and general crafter. By the wee hours of the morning or when I’m intoxicated I love to listen to the voices in my head and let them tell me stories. I hope you enjoy their stories.
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