First PEnny Reid book to make me cry

This book made me cry.

Even after being about 3 books deep in The Winston Brothers series before I even realised that this book existed, it made me cry.

I started the Knitting In The City series to read this book.

Ashley Winston is losing her mother, and she's not been home to Green Valley in years. When she gets there, she runs into Drew who is now the executor of her mothers estate.

She doesn't want to be in Green Valley for a bunch of reasons. Her live is in Chicago. She doesn't get along with her many MANY brothers. Her father is THE WORST.

All of this remains true until way into this book (although her dad remains the worst to this day)

but Ashely and Drew are super cute

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Heartbreakingly sad and beautiful

Wow! That was amazing. As ever there is a full on Penny Reid clever, deep, sexy and entertaining story with wonderful characters and an unexpected setting. As ever you go on an eye opening journey. This time it was beautiful and loving yet so poignant and overwhelming sad. Beyond crying, at times I sobbed. Thank you for the occasional light relief and for the HEA. I needed it.
The narrator was outstanding! Such a variety of voices, tones, moods and intonation. Every word was sheer perfection, so now I’m going to add all work by Joy Nash to my TBR. (TBHeard?)
PS The poetry was mind blowing too.

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Beautifully written and narrated

A heartfelt story about losing a beloved mother and yet finding the deep love of a life partner.
The story is made more outstanding by the beautiful narrative and depth of emotion brought out with the use of poetry. The narrator did an excellent job of bringing all the characters to life and put so much feeling into the storyline. Deserves more than a 5 star rating ❤

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Brilliant, moving, emotional, funny

Just when I think Penny Reid cannot write any better, she does just that. This book is one of the best I have read. Ok, so it won’t win any prizes for fiction outside of the romance world, but this is a seriously good book.

It takes a brave writer to base a romance around the death of a much loved parent. In this book the h goes back to her childhood home to nurse her terminally ill mother. She meets poetry quoting, verbally reticent, mountain man H, who has befriended her mother in the last few years and is also close to her many, bearded “mountain men” brothers. Her brothers had mercilessness teased and tormented her in her childhood, and in her memories were unstable, unreliable and unresponsible. At 18 years old she cut ties with them all to escape to a new life in the city, only keeping in loving daily touch with her mother. Returning home she finds to her surprise that her brothers have matured into a group of stable, loving, affectionate, very funny and very protective siblings, and she soon realises that cutting ties was a mistake that she should have rectified a lot sooner.

This book deals with the myriad of confused emotions that surround the illness and death of someone who is loved. This has a personal resonance with me, as I lost both my parents recently: One was after a long illness, the other was sudden, unexpected and shocking. So this book was dealing with a subject I am unfortunately quite familiar with. Penny Reid illustrates how feelings and emotions don’t follow any set formula, and humour, happiness and, yes, even love, can happen at the most unexpected times. She has two central characters who are eloquent, well educated, erudite, and share a mutual love of classical poetry, and she makes this work amazingly well.

This book is perhaps not for everyone. The poetry is frequent and classical, and I suspect some readers would be tempted to speed read those parts. I am glad that I had the audio version that forced me to listen to every word of the poetry. To skip these parts is a mistake as the poetry and the message that those poems hold are central to understanding the story and the characters. The epilogue is a classic. It is the first time we have the POV of the H who is notorious for not being much of a talker. Inside his head we realise that for a man of few words he has an astonishing vocabulary in his mind and indeed, poetry is the way that he thinks. In fact the epilogue is pretty much one long poem expressing the depth of his feelings for the h and it is truly beautiful.

Special mention must go to the narrator who was exceptional, and helped to make a beautiful book into something really quite unique.

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Cute book brilliant narrator

Love Penny Reid - lovey slow burn love story . The narrator was 1st class. All in all worth the listen.

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Joy Nash is amazing!

Joy Nash the narrator really brings the character to life and makes the story come alive. loved this book beforw but didn't understand the intensity and depth of feelings in the story as may be I wasn't as much emotionally mature as I'm today.

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Great Narration

This one is my favourite so far of all the Knitting in the City Group.

From the narrators smooth voice to the rough and rugged charactors.

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DREW IS POETRY IN MOTION

Drew is poetry in motion

THIS BOOK IS BLOODY AWESOME. Penny Reid's words sometimes blow me away.


I laughed hard, felt the sad times and swooned so much from Drew's words.

I was immediately hooked on this book, I was laughing from the first chapter and had plenty of giggles throughout. Beauty and the Mustache is a brilliantly balanced heartwarming story with humor in the mix.

The rabid raccoon scene, oh boy, days, weeks on now after listening to that scene and I still laugh at it, I think I told everyone at work about that part which had them laughing too.

I listened to this on audio and boy did the narrator make this feel real, the southern drawl and the characters, she really did them justice, at times it was like I was right there with the characters.

This book can be read as a standalone, has a perfect balance of humor and emotion. I loved it and would definitely read or listen more, especially the Winston brothers I love them already and have only had snippets of them. I feel like I am late to the party with this series and have so much to catch up on, and I want to devour the Winston brothers.


Every woman deserves a Drew in their lives, he's a new BBF of my shelf for sure.

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2nd book from Penny Reid and not disappointed!

Absolutely loved the whole sensitive man story and the poetry quotes were a treat !

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