Score: 4/5 Bookmarks

Steam Rating: 🍆🍆🍆/5

Thank you to Berkley Publishing for gifting me a review copy of Well Played by Jen Deluca. This is the second book in the Well Met series. If you haven’t read the first book this one works well as a stand-alone, but Well Met is awesome so you should definitely go read it right away!

At the end of the summer Renaissance Faire our leading lady, Stacey, is feeling the post-Faire blues and realizing that she doesn’t have a whole lot in life to look forward to. Then her friends Emily and Simon (from Well Met) get engaged and that gives her the kicks she needs to start getting more out of life. Before we know it Stacey has sent a drunken DM to her summer-time hook-up and they start chatting back and forth on the regular.

Now, I didn’t bother reading anything about this book before I started. I loved Well Met so much that I just dove right in. So when I guessed (very early on) that Stacey wasn’t actually talking to the man she thought she was talking to (Dex) I felt super proud of myself for figuring it out. Then, as I was writing this review I finally read the synopsis and realized that everyone knew she wasn’t talking to Dex, lol.

Initially, I wasn’t super into the whole catfishing idea, but I figured it was a unique angle for a romance at least.

Both books involve female leads who are trying to find themselves, and work out what they want from life, so there’s a definite similarity there. I’ll admit that I loved Well Met a little more than this one, but it was a very high bar to begin with. I don’t love female leads where their entire happiness seems hinged on a man, so I really wanted Stacey to go out and build her own life, find her own happiness.

I loved hearing all about Renaissance Faire life in the first book, because it’s not something I knew much about (other than what I learned from a few episodes on Gilmore Girls), but Well Played happens mostly during the time between Faires so there isn’t quite as much of that fun stuff in this book.

Definitely give this one a read though. You can grab it via the button below. And if you’re an audiobook fan, Brittany Pressley narrates this one—she’s one of my all-time favorite romance narrators—and you can get a copy here.

Synopsis:

Stacey is jolted when her friends Simon and Emily get engaged. She knew she was putting her life on hold when she stayed in Willow Creek to care for her sick mother, but it's been years now, and even though Stacey loves spending her summers pouring drinks and flirting with patrons at the local Renaissance Faire, she wants more out of life. Stacey vows to have her life figured out by the time her friends get hitched at Faire next summer. Maybe she'll even find The One.

When Stacey imagined "The One," it never occurred to her that her summertime Faire fling, Dex MacLean, might fit the bill. While Dex is easy on the eyes onstage with his band The Dueling Kilts, Stacey has never felt an emotional connection with him. So when she receives a tender email from the typically monosyllabic hunk, she's not sure what to make of it.

Faire returns to Willow Creek, and Stacey comes face-to-face with the man with whom she’s exchanged hundreds of online messages over the past nine months. To Stacey's shock, it isn't Dex—she's been falling in love with a man she barely knows.