Engagement and Espionage by Penny Reid
engagement and espionage
official blurb
Jennifer Sylvester made her deal with the devil . . . and now they’re engaged! But all is not well in Green Valley. A chicken choker is on the loose, 61 dead birds most "fowl" need plucking, and no time remains for Jennifer and her devilish fiancé. Desperate to find a spare moment together, Jenn and Cletus’s attempts to reconnect are thwarted by one seemingly coincidental disaster after another. It’s not long before Cletus and Jenn see a pattern emerge and the truth becomes clear. Sabotage! Will an undercover mission unmask the culprit? Or are these love-birds totally plucked?
3.75 our of 5
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 out of 5 steam level
I loved diving back into the Winston brothers lives. I struggled through a lot of the "pennyverse" books so I was not sure how I would feel revisiting this world again, but in the end I was happy I did.
Cletus and Jenn are as adorable as ever. This was a different genre of book than the Winston brothers- I would call this a steamy cozy mystery, with the steam level being quite high.
I really liked this book! It was a little stressful for me (that's normal with me and any suspense even if it's minimal), even with it being pretty predictable. It was fun to try to piece together where this book intertwined with the other books in the timeline. I almost had to remember what I didn't know yet.
One of the things that this book mentions is how rude Cletus is to Roscoe - I had no memory of this whatsoever! This is probably to be expected when you read 628183772 books in this universe but it was kind of funny to me that I didn't remember that at all.
Like most PR books there are plenty of content warnings: abuse (emotional and physical), kidnapping, gun violence, attempted murder.
Overall I read this book quickly and really loved the time I got to spend in Green Valley. I loved seeing Cletus and Shelley interacting a lot.
One last complaint is the last chapter was from Cletus' perspective and it felt as though it should've been from Jenn's. it didn't keep the same cadence or tone that Cletus' chapters usually did.
While this is technically a stand alone novel I would not recommend it without reading Beard Science (but in all reality you should read the Winston brothersseries up through beard science and then read this book). And if you really wanted to go for it, it would give you additional knowledge of you read Ashley and Drew's book (Beauty and the Mustache) before the Winston brothers series. I know, that's a lot before this but the series is on my required reading list for romance lovers, so really you should read it anyways.
while reading you should
listen to bluegrass music - may I suggest the civil wars?
Eat: a new cupcake from a local bakery.
Do: change your oil and have your tire pressure checked. (Cletus is a mechanic after all).
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