Grin and Beard It - Penny Reid (Winston Brothers #1)

I confess: I only read this book because I wanted to read the one after it.  The second book in the Winston Brothers series, the hero in this one is Jethro, the oldest of the brothers and the one who, despite his checkered past, interested me the least.  While the heroine, Sienna, seemed promising, I really really wanted to read more about Cletus!  But he's the subject of the third book, and so I had to get through this one first.

Sienna is a plus-sized actress and script writer who is in Tennessee filming her latest movie, which she both wrote and is starring in.  Unfortunately, Sienna has a terrible sense of direction and ends up stranded on a mountain road, only to be rescued by Jethro.  The two are immediately attracted to each other, though Jethro has no idea who Sienna is, and even ends up under the impression that her name is Sarah.  But having someone interested in for her for reasons other than her fame is one of the things that makes Jethro attractive to Sienna.  The mistaken identity thing does get sorted out fairly quickly, but it also puts a wedge between them, as does the morass of people surrounding them and thinking their relationship is/would be a bad idea--mostly on Sienna's side.

They of course have chemistry, Reid's couples always do, and I appreciated a character with Sienna's background--she's Latina and a female comedian and plus-sized to boot, and while she appreciates that she's blazing a trail, she also just kind of wants to be left alone, as her life is running her ragged.  She's an atypical heroine, and that was nice to see.  But I honestly just didn't find her and Jethro to be that interesting.  I think too much about Jethro was already hammered out in other books, whether it be Truth or Beard or Beauty and the Mustache, and so there wasn't a ton of interesting stuff left to learn about him.  Sure, we found out he likes to do woodworking, but that was pretty much it.  His lasting guilt and Dark Past had already been established and we'd already seen his path to redemption, so that didn't really add anything to this story.  Sienna brought light and sparkle, but there wasn't a lot else going on and that meant she had a lot of lifting to do essentially on her own, and I'm not convinced she entirely pulled it off.

For me, this was a book to conquer to get on to another one, but I still had hopes for it.  Unfortunately, it also felt like a book that had to be gotten through in order to move on to bigger and better things.  Did I like it?  Yeah.  But it's not one I'd be going back to, and I think I can breathe easy knowing Jethro will now be relegated to side-character status once again.

3 stars out of 5.