Ten years after Roscoe Winston dropped out of her life, all Simone Payton wants is to exploit him. Unfortunately, after one chance encounter, Simone keeps popping up everywhere he happens to be. Roscoe Winston remembers everything?every look, every word, every single unrequited second?and the last thing he needs is another memory of Simone. He?d also like to forget her entirely, but that?s never going to happen. But then, the other part of me… just can’t wait.Ten years after Simone Payton broke his heart, all Roscoe Winston wants is a doughnut. I’m not exactly jumping to read Beard With Me because I know that it’s probably going to break my heart. And it sets things up for the next two books – Billy’s story. But it also helps to kind of round out the story with Darrell, who hovers throughout all of the tales. Not only does this story hit all of my happy points for diversity and romance. One that is so completely true – and Roscoe and Simone definitely work with this cliché perfectly. There is a horrible cliché about falling in love with your best friend. There is something just… adorable and impossible to forget about such a story line. I love the stories about those who grew together as friends and become lovers. But something about these two… it’s just wonderful. I mean, all of the Reid couples are ones that you are pulling for from the beginning. One that you fall in love with from the very first moment. Plus, it also is a great story point and methodology to pull Simone into the tale and the world of the Winston’s again. It just made this story all that much more difficult to put down. So, having a story that much more heavily featured him in the present (for the first four books he’s in jail) was… awesome. And probably because he is also believable… he is also one of those villains that seriously give me the heebie jeebies. Which is lovely considering that he is also the one that is in love with his childhood best friend… and the way he goes about it? Oh, honestly, once I actually got into this book and had the time to pick it up, I just devoured the whole damn story.Īlthough this is a contemporary romance series, Darrell Winston is a scary, horrible villain. Of all of the absolutely delectable brothers, he is most definitely the sweetest.

He has been throughout all of the Winston Brothers books but getting to read about him as a sweetheart from the very beginning… oh.

In this case, we have a POC lead female, and a male with a seriously awesome memory… one that I’m not exactly jealous of, because I can understand how painful that would probably be for him. The fact that, yet again, Reid finds characters that are not mainstream and a little in the minority… well, it just draws you further and further into the storyline. She is funny, engaging, generally awesome and just all round, a lot of fun.

Dr. Strange Beard by Penny Reid