A friend (it’s emmalita) and I have a running joke about Penny Reid that she is on probation with us, though we clearly keep reading her contemporary romances and seem to take turns actually paying for them. Reid was on secret probation, then double secret probation, then an unprecedented triple secret probation, before peeling back to regular probation and now she’s on “wait and see” status. That’s all a long walk to say that Reid’s work has been uneven, but can be very enjoyable when the elements in her books come together. The Winston Brothers series has two strong books, Beauty and the Mustache and Grin and Beard It, this decent one, and one outright disappointment in Truth or Beard.
TL:DR opening paragraph: Penny Reid can be very good, but she has just as many misses as hits.
From Amazon: Jennifer Sylvester wants one thing, and that one thing is NOT to be Tennessee’s reigning Banana Cake Queen. Ever the perpetual good girl and obedient daughter, Jennifer is buckling under the weight of her social media celebrity, her mother’s ambitions, and her father’s puritanical mandates…Cletus Winston is a puzzle wrapped in a mystery covered in conundrum sauce, and now he’s in a pickle. Despite being convinced of his own omniscience, extortion by the exalted Banana Cake Queen of Green Valley has taken him completely by surprise
The Winston men, Cletus, Beau, Billy, Jethro, Roscoe, and Duane, live in small town Tennessee and are the source of much of the hi-jinks that locally ensue. Their father was a hell-raiser, their mother a saint, and now that both have gone to their reward (jail for him, Heaven for her), the Winstons are moving on with settling down and finding love. Cletus is the family eccentric, an image he cultivates to hide both his intelligence and his sundry machinations. Unfortunately for him, Jennifer Sylvester is a people watcher who not only has Cletus’s number, but is willing to use it.
Living her life under her mother’s thumb and as a monument to what I believe is called “performative femininity”, Jennifer wants to improve her situation but isn’t necessarily seeking a complete emancipation. Looking to hone her dating skills and carve a measure of independence, she blackmails offers Cletus a marriage of convenience silence about her knowledge of his skullduggery in exchange for dating advice. He accepts, they fall in love, she frees herself, he smartens up. The End.
Neither a hit, nor really a miss, Beard Science was okay. I read it months ago and I while I’m pretty sure I liked it just fine, I have not revisited it at all, nor am I expecting to. From what I can remember, I’m not sure I approved of Cletus’ shenanigans thwarting the local criminal element as they smacked of vigilantism. The fact that he has good intentions or knows best is no defense. There are other, better Penny Reid books out there and they are listed on my website version of this review.
Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful or my streamlined recommendations list.
For having read this some time ago, your recall and concise eloquence is impressive. It occurred to me that Reid probably has a new book coming soon. And indeed she does. It’s a new Knitting in the City book. Unfortunately, you can’t tell from a plot description whether or not it’s going to be a good book.
Thank you, I did actually have it about half-written when I went back to it today.
Please tell me there is no shouting of names in the throes of passion. :) It doesn’t really matter – I was pretty unimpressed with the one Reid I read (Neanderthal Seeks Human – which I understand is considered one of her better ones?) so I won’t be trying this either way. But seriously, that name is terrible, even for a bearded man in rural Tennessee.
If the weird joo-joo of Neanderthal Seeks Human didn’t work for you, the only other one I might suggest trying is Beauty and the Moustache which I quite liked.
Cletus is NOT a sexy name.
I liked Cletus as a side character in Grin and Beard It, but that is the only Reid I have ever finished. And I plan to keep it that way for a long time. I’m 50% through Neanderthal Seeks Human, and it made me want to shred my kindle so I think in general she’s not for me.
I hated Neanderthal Seeks Human. Both Quinn and Janey get on my nerves. Reid does write better stuff. Not leaps and bounds better, but definitely better.
I think a lot comes down to Janey. I liked her but I can see how she would bug people.
All of those names are bold choices. I mean, can you imagine yelling out Roscoe in the throes of passion? (The exception is Beau, but only because that’s a tried and true Southern gentleman’s name.) (And no offense to anyone who is partnered up with a Roscoe or a Cletus. But I just…can’t, with the names.)
Also, every time I read a Beard review, I think of beard in not the hipster, woodsman sense but in the, you know, pretend wife cause the husband really likes dudes instead sense. And then I can’t quite understand how it’s a romance between a man and a woman. Or sometimes I think of the beards on those hipster beer guys that are all the rage at least in my town, the really long, scraggly types that make me think there are creatures living in there, and I get yuckked out. And I like beards on men. I actually love beards. My dad has one. JB has one and I actually teared up the one time he shaved it. But beards on dudes named Cletus? I don’t know about that.
Also, apropos of nothing, I wouldn’t mind being the Banana Cake Queen. I’ll bet you get to eat a lot.
Sorry for hijacking your review. ;)
They are names that cry out for nicknames. They all have decent middle names as I recall. The first names are christing awful no matter how playfully intended.