Title: Beauty and the Mustache
Series: The Winston Brothers #0.5; Knitting in the City #4
Author: Penny Reid
Publication Date: December 1st, 2014
Shelves: Contemporary; Romance
Format: Kindle Edition (361 pages)
Rating: ★★☆☆☆ 2.5 stars
Goodreads 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, reclusive mountain man, 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.
I read this months ago, and I wasn’t planning on writing a review for it. But I’m actually in the mood to write reviews so I’m going to try and write one for this!
So I was underwhelmed by this. I really like the Winston Brothers series, but somehow missed this novel when I first started the series a couple years ago.
I quite liked Ashley’s character, but I found Drew boring. He’s a very stoic character and you don’t get much from him except his love for poetry and nature. He also spends a lot of time in the novel deliberately winding Ashley up. The mystery surrounding him is part of his image in the town where they live, but as a result I felt that I didn’t really know much about him in the end. If we got more of his POV this could have been remedied.
As for their relationship, they start off poorly due to an awkward-meet, but they slowly warm to each other throughout the novel. Ashley and Drew quote Nietzsche to each other a lot and it was bordering on exhausting and cringey to read. I even started skimming moments between them because the constant back and forth quotes were just tedious to me. I did actually like their relationship overall, they’re well-suited in that they’re both quite laid-back and they’re both slightly pretentious. I just wish we saw a little more of Drew’s personality.
My biggest hangup about this novel was how detached I felt while reading it. This novel counts as part of two different series, and my love of one series (Winston Brothers), and zero knowledge of the other (Knitting in the City) really impacted my reading experience. With series like this, you can read them as standalones but I believe it’s better to read them in a series, and I especially believe that about this novel. I felt that this novel was too wrapped up in the Knitting in the City series (which I haven’t read), and as a result I just felt disconnected at parts. I suppose that’s my own fault? But this novel is part of two different but interconnecting series, and I’m not 100% sure that it worked.
Also there were several things about this novel I didn’t really understand. Here’s a quick list:
I have more to say but I won’t to avoid spoilers, but there was just a lot of weirdness surrounding some of these characters and their actions.
I did like this book, but my main gripe was that I just felt detached from it all. The love interest didn’t much appeal to me. It also felt a little inconsistent with the other Winston Brothers novels (which I love), and since I’ve never read the other Knitting in the City novels, I felt that I was missing something with this one.
Would you read this novel again? Maybe an audiobook version?
Who would I recommend this novel to? Romance readers wanting a novel about literature lovers? Fans of Penny Reid of course!
