Score: 5/5 Bookmarks

Steam Rating: 🍆🍆/5

Well Met by Jen DeLuca is simply delightful. I honestly loved everything about this book—the characters, the writing, the fact that our leads start out hating each other (which mirrors my husband and my meeting), the storyline, the obstacles they have to overcome, and I also really loved learning about what goes into a Renaissance Faire.

There is also a theme of fitting in and finding your place in a new location that really resonated with me, having moved every two years for the last 15 years and struggling to foster ‘place attachment’ and a sense of being ‘home’.

It will have you feeling all the feels. Laughing one second, and tearing up the next. But you’ll want to keep turning those pages to find out how the story ends. Definitely one I would recommend!

I started reading the physical book (which you can get here) but then switched to the audiobook version, which is narrated by Brittany Pressley, who I absolutely adore. I’d actually just finished another audiobook narrated by her right before starting this one, so it was a pleasant continuity. You can get your own audio copy, while supporting local brick-and-mortar bookstores through Libro.fm by clicking the button below. Use the code ‘LatestBookCrush’ to get yourself three-for-one audiobooks!

Synopsis:

All's faire in love and war for two sworn enemies who indulge in a harmless flirtation in a laugh-out-loud rom-com from debut author, Jen DeLuca.

Emily knew there would be strings attached when she relocated to the small town of Willow Creek, Maryland, for the summer to help her sister recover from an accident, but who could anticipate getting roped into volunteering for the local Renaissance Faire alongside her teenaged niece? Or that the irritating and inscrutable schoolteacher in charge of the volunteers would be so annoying that she finds it impossible to stop thinking about him?

The faire is Simon's family legacy and from the start he makes clear he doesn't have time for Emily's lighthearted approach to life, her oddball Shakespeare conspiracy theories, or her endless suggestions for new acts to shake things up. Yet on the faire grounds he becomes a different person, flirting freely with Emily when she's in her revealing wench's costume. But is this attraction real, or just part of the characters they're portraying?

This summer was only ever supposed to be a pit stop on the way to somewhere else for Emily, but soon she can't seem to shake the fantasy of establishing something more with Simon, or a permanent home of her own in Willow Creek.