Spice level: ( )

Well Played by Jen DeLuca
Well Met series #2. Contemporary romance. Can be read as a stand-alone.
Stacey has been helping plan and work at the local Renaissance Faire for many years. When her friends got engaged, Stacey starts thinking about her own lacking love life. Something has to change. One night after drinking, she sends an email to a former fling. Over the course of the next several months, she ends up trading emails and texts and getting to know and liking Dex a lot. At least she believed it was Dex until the next year’s faire and it turns out she’s actually been communicating with Dan, the manager of the band instead of the drummer. Now she needs to find out how, why and if any of their conversations were real.

Cute spinoff from the first book and a play on the Shakespeare comedy. Stacey is hurt and needs to find out the full backstory which of course, has its own mishaps. Costume dress up and wenches slinging drinks along with regular players make the faire more summer fun than work. Add in a wedding plus good friends and it’s a romance set in a playground. Or jousting ring. Entertaining and a bit steamy. ( )

{Second of 4 in Well Met series; romance, renaissance faire, steamy}(2020)

This book starts at the end of Emily's second Ren Faire and follows her friend Stacey. It is narrated in first person from Stacey's point of view and takes it through the year to the next Ren Faire.

Stacey has grown up in Willow Creek, except for her college years, and has hooked up with Dex Maclean - hunk in a kilt and part of the touring Duelling Kilts act - for the past couple of years during Ren Faire as friends with benefits, no strings attached. This year, after a few too many glasses of wine and feeling that life is passing her by, she sends him a message to say she misses him. To her surprise, he replies saying he misses her too. And so they begin a year long correspondence, which reveals his sensitive side, until the Duelling Kilts return to Willow Creek. When they finally meet again, will he show this new side that Stacey is falling in love with or will he act like the hunk she knew?

Fun and fluffy, like the first book; a good follow up. It continues the story of Emily and other characters whom we got to know in Well Met. As much as the first book introduced us to the world of Renaissance fairs and the towns that host them, this one expands that with a look behind the acts that tour between the fairs. I would have liked to have got a more solid idea of how the hero first fell for Stacey, though.

The blurb (I can't say on the back cover, because I borrowed it as an e-book from the library) reveals a twist that comes about a third of the way through the story, which is a shame because it would have been a stronger book if I hadn't known it (so avoid reading the blurb if you can).

One slightly disappointing note; like Emily, Stacey's career has been derailed by family commitments and, though she finds a fulfilling career at the end of this book, it wasn't what she had started out doing which was something she had been good at and enjoyed.

(August 2023)
3.25 stars ( )

I adored Well Met, the first in a romance series by Jen DeLuca, and so was looking forward to reading Well Played. Now seemed like the perfect time since my family and I had just been to a Renaissance Faire, and I was very much in the mood to maintain that Ren Faire ambience. It didn't take me long to settle in with the book, and the next thing I knew, I was done!

While a portion of the novel takes place off season, much of it is set during the summer in small town Willow Creek. Stacey lives for the faire and looks forward to being a part of it each year. Her dreams of a career and her own life fell away years before after her mother got sick, Stacey has accepted that she's stuck in her current life. She tries to pretend she's happy, but that façade cracks a little when her best friend Emily and Simon get engaged. After drinking too much one night, Stacey leaves a comment on the Dueling Kilts band fan page of her sometimes Ren Faire fling, which leads to a year of e-mail correspondence and later texts. She pours her heart out to him and him to her. Or so she thinks. If you are getting a Cyrano de Bergerac vibe, you wouldn't be far off. Or catfishing for the less romantic take on it. But this is a romance so let's go with with the Cyrano vibe . . .

Although Well Met was magic for me in every way, I was a little less enamored with Well Played. I did enjoy it though. It was funny and charming, not to mention the setting. I found Stacey relatable (and it's always nice to come across a plus sized heroine). On the outside, she's confident and flirty, which we see some of in the first book in the series where she is a secondary character. But in this book, with her front and center, we get to see a more complex character, as the layers fall away. It was great to see some of the repeat characters from the earlier book--Emily, Simon, April and Mitch (whose turn it will be in Well Matched, which I look forward to reading).

I admit to not knowing much about faire life, but one aspect I really appreciated about this novel was how it gives readers a glimpse behind the curtain of a Ren Faire and some of it's moving parts--from the local volunteers to the vendors and entertainers who spend their life on the road traveling from faire to faire, as well as the rehearsals, costumes, and some of the behind the scenes action. ( )

Stacey has loved working the Ren Faire every summer since she was eighteen. Now in her mid-twenties and feeling stuck in the small town where she stayed when her mom had a health scare, she sends a drunken text to Dex MacLean, the eye candy she hooked up with the past two summers who has a "wench at every fair". But then she gets a message back - and it's much deeper of a response than she ever would've expected from Dex.

I enjoyed getting to learn a little bit more of Stacey's story - she was the other "wench" who seemed pretty happy-go-lucky and showed Emily the ropes in Well Met. Stacey and the man she messages (it's... pretty obvious early on who it actually is) have a fun back-and-forth a little reminiscent of You've Got Mail and while I don't know the original Cyrano de Bergerac beyond the Wishbone episode, English nerds Emily and Simon make sure that we don't miss the connection. I also liked seeing their reappearance and the continuation of their story as side characters in this one. Cute and enjoyable, perfect beach reading. ( )