Well Played by Jen DeLuca

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Title: Well Played
Author: Jen DeLuca
Series: Well Met #2
Published by: Berkley
Release Date: September 22, 2020
Format: Kobo Book
Pages: 332
Genres: Contemporary, Romance
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2023 Backlist Reader Challenge, Lenoreo's 2023 COYER Chapter 1
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ Google ✩ Kobo ✩ iBooks ✩ IndieBound ✩ Book Depository
My rating:

Blurb:

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.

My Review:

3.5 stars — I think my mediocre rating for this one had to do with 2 things on a personal front: having expectations for who Stacey was and how I thought this story would go; and simultaneously reading a book I’m really loving so I would inevitably compare the two and notice more clearly what this story was missing for me.

As far as the expectations go, I guess I just had a picture in my mind of Stacey.  It wasn’t that I didn’t think she was deeper behind her happy smiley façade, but I just anticipated something else.  The Stacey we got was actually a very real character, just not one I connected with as deeply.  While she may not have seen it as clearly, she had a lot of self esteem issues that never really felt like they were dealt with, especially about her plus size body.  (and again, this didn’t help me compare with the other heroine I’m reading).  While I totally understand the dangers that many face with the way we use social media, and she was a very accurate portrayal, it’s something that I’ve always been a bit bummed about, and I felt like her realizations about it happened very shallowly.

Honestly, that’s how it felt for many of the things she was struggling with.  We never really got to see her character dive deep into so many of the issues she was facing — her unhappiness with sticking around home, her mixed feelings towards her Mom about that, her lack of passion for…well, much of anything in her life, her somewhat shallow view of guys.  We get to the end, and I feel like there were just a bunch of missed opportunities…for me at least.

I loved the correspondence romance she has with Daniel, even if you could tell from moment one what was happening.  It was slightly overshadowed by the worry of the lie behind it, but I still really enjoyed seeing them connect that way.  I especially love how he helped her on one very specific day.  And part of me appreciated the way their romance played out the next summer, but part of me was frustrated with the conflict and climax.  I would have appreciated it more if Stacey hadn’t needed others to spell things out for her…again, missed opportunity.

I truly love the setting of the small town, especially of these unlikely set of friends surrounding the Faire.  I’m just not sure that the love stories Ms. DeLuca writes are quite right for me in the end…just not a match, you know?

COYER Community: I buddy read this book with Lillian and Brandee, just like with Well Met, but we also added Berls to the mix!  We had an absolute blast dissecting different moments in the story, giving our theories, and hoping for the best.  I was definitely the pickiest, and in the end they all rated the story 4 stars (Lillian’s review, Brandee’s review, and Berls’ review).