WELL PLAYED BY JEN DELUCA

9/21/2020

While I found the premise for Well Played to be cute, I found the plot to be a little dry. I was expecting a lot of happiness and excitement but it was too few and far between.

Rating: ★★★
Release Date: September 22, 2020
Genre: Romantic Comedy.
Series: Well Met #2 (Can Standalone).
Pages: 332 pages
Format: eBook. ARC.

Another laugh-out-loud romantic comedy featuring kilted musicians, Renaissance Faire tavern wenches, and an unlikely love story.

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.

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READ MY BOOK REVIEW

My Rating: 3 Stars
Tropes: Romantic Comedy(ish)

Well Played is the second book in the Well Met series. Each book features a new couple so they can be read in any order. I can say this with certainty because I haven’t had the chance (yet) to read the first one and had no problem following this one.

For the most part, I thought Well Played was a cute story. The plot is unique as it’s a love story that stems from 𝗖𝗔𝗧𝗙𝗜𝗦𝗛𝗜𝗡𝗚 which I haven’t seen much of in romance. However, I did find the story to be a little… dry? I was thinking this would be a romantic comedy and honestly didn’t find it funny in the slightest. It was also extremely slow (to me) and took me forever to read it. Perhaps I just read it at a bad time and would have enjoyed it more had I read it earlier (or later) but for NOW it wasn’t the most exciting thing I’ve picked up.

No matter how slow or humorless I found the novel, I did enjoy Stacey and Daniels 𝗨𝗡𝗖𝗢𝗡𝗩𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡𝗔𝗟 love story. There were a few things about it that rubbed me the wrong way; how easily Stacey forgave him for his lying and how easy it was for Daniel to give up, but they did make a cute pair and watching them fall for one another through texts and emails was really cute. I also love how much of the setting revolves around a Renaissance Faire! I have never read a book like that and I found it absolutely adorable. It’s the little things like this that make a book for me and it certainly highlighted the story.

Overall, this book is getting 𝟯 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗥𝗦 from me which means it’s a 𝗚𝗢𝗢𝗗 𝗕𝗢𝗢𝗞 but lacks a certain charm to make it completely lovable. I would certainly recommend it to fellow readers and will be taking the time to see how this world started in Well Met as soon as I can. I’ve heard form the grapevine that Well Met is a bit better than this one (no offense) and look forward to reading it!