Well Matched (Well Met #3) by Jen DeLuca

Synopsis (From Goodreads)

An accidentally in-love rom-com filled with Renaissance Faire flower crowns, kilts, corsets, and sword fights.

Single mother April Parker has lived in Willow Creek for twelve years with a wall around her heart. On the verge of being an empty nester, she’s decided to move on from her quaint little town, and asks her friend Mitch for his help with some home improvement projects to get her house ready to sell.

Mitch Malone is known for being the life of every party, but mostly for the attire he wears to the local Renaissance Faire–a kilt (and not much else) that shows off his muscled form to perfection. While he agrees to help April, he needs a favor too: she’ll pretend to be his girlfriend at an upcoming family dinner, so that he can avoid the lectures about settling down and having a more “serious” career than high school coach and gym teacher. April reluctantly agrees, but when dinner turns into a weekend trip, it becomes hard to tell what’s real and what’s been just for show. But when the weekend ends, so must their fake relationship.

As summer begins, Faire returns to Willow Creek, and April volunteers for the first time. When Mitch’s family shows up unexpectedly, April pretends to be Mitch’s girlfriend again…something that doesn’t feel so fake anymore. Despite their obvious connection, April insists they’ve just been putting on an act. But when there’s the chance for something real, she has to decide whether to change her plans–and open her heart–for the kilt-wearing hunk who might just be the love of her life. 

My Review
5 out of 5 stars

This is my favorite installment of the Well Met Renaissance Faire romance series.

We follow April, a 40 year-old single mom who is about to be an empty nester. She never really got involved in her small town life, so as soon as her daughter is off to college, she is going to sell her house and move to the city. She needs to prepare her house in order to sell it, so she could use some help. Enter in Mitch, a 31 year-old gym teacher who is known as the Kilt man in the local summer renaissance faire. He certainly is capable to help out, but he needs a favor in exchange; his annual family reunion is coming up and his family has been pressuring him to settle down. He needs a girlfriend to bring with. April agrees, as she’s known Mitch for awhile since her sister is a large organizer of the renaissance faire, and really, Mitch isn’t a sight for sore eyes.

I just incredibly related to April as a protagonist. She cares too much about what people think, and dating the local hunk who’s about 10 years her junior is not something she wants people to gossip about. She also has a hard time admitting her feelings, and it takes a long time for her to come into her own. Readers might be frustrated with this aspect, as it can feel like it is dragged out. But as someone with pretty bad social anxiety, I thought this book was executed perfectly. April was also relatable to me in that she was a homebody and never really got involved in her area. She somehow avoided the renaissance faire every year she’s lived there, despite he daughter performing in it for the past 2 years. I like to think I would get involved in a local renaissance faire if we had one (I am a big ren faire nerd), but I’m also a homebody.

The fake dating troupe was cute here, and there were several instances where the fake dating had to come back into play. If you don’t like that troupe, you’ll grow tired of it here, I’m sure. I also enjoyed getting Mitch’s story since his character was pretty well fleshed out in the previous two installments. He’s a fun and nice fella. I also think this is one reason I enjoyed this book more, as both April and Mitch were a lot more prevalent in the previous two books. The previous book, Well Played, only followed Stacy; the male lead was a new character tossed into the mix.

Unrelated to anything in regards to an opinion of the book, but I was so impressed by April fixing up her house in order to sell it. My partner and I are in the market to purchase our first home and we get frustrated over all these owners who don’t take care of their houses. If only April existed in real life! I’d buy her house– it has a kitchen island! Anyway, the slight direct life correlation also just had me all for this book,

I recommend if you like the fake dating troupe, small town romances, and/or read previous books of this series and enjoyed those. If you’re in it just for the Ren Faire, fair warning that the Ren Faire doesn’t occur until the last 1/3 of the book or so, but honestly it was my favorite part and so worth it. 🙂

I received a free eARC via Netgalley. All opinions are my own.

See this review on Goodreads and on Storygraph.

Well Played (Well Met #2) by Jen DeLuca

Synopsis (From Goodreads)

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 out of 5 stars

Stacy is happy to see her Renaissance Faire friends Simon and Emily engaged, but she can’t help but feel a little stuck in life. One of her longtime goals was to get out of her small town life, but after college she came back to help her mom. Being in such as small town hasn’t done much for her love life, as she still hasn’t had much luck with men. There is a member of a traveling Ren Faire group, Dex MacLean, that she has been booty calling every summer when he’s in town for the faire. After her friends engagement, she sees life passing her by too quickly, so she drunkenly sends him a message after the Willow Creek Renaissance Faire is over to see if he’d be into something more. To her surprise, he texts back, and they spend the next 10 months emailing each other back and forth. It’s another year to the next Ren Faire, after all, and Dex’s job has him traveling from Faire to Faire around the country. What will come of their relationship when it’s time again for the Willow Creek Renaissance Faire again?

I enjoyed this one about as much as I enjoyed the first book of this series. Stacy was the other Tavern Maid that helped Emily out in the first book, so here we get to see her love story. One of the later reveals in the book is super predictable from the beginning. However, I don’t think Ms. DeLuca was trying to fool anyone with it, so the tension that keeps you reading is how a character will react when they find out.

Stacy’s romance story isn’t really a cute romance story. It’s one that has you hoping each character will understand each other on where they are coming from, and the importance of being able to forgive others. I do think Stacy’s story has more chemistry to her love interest than Emily did in the first book of this series, though. It had me rooting for the couple more. I mostly read these books because they are fun romance books set around a Renaissance Faire, and I am a big fan of Renissance Faires. I do miss them immensely in this dire year of 2020, so I am thankful I get a dose of them in books.

I will definitely continue on with the rest of the books in this series. I recommend this series if you enjoy contemporary romances and also if you enjoy Ren Faires.

Thank you to the publisher for providing a free eARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

See this review on Goodreads.

Well Met by Jen DeLuca

Synopsis (From Goodreads)

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.

My Review
3.5 out of 5 stars

I’ve almost been going to a Renaissance Faire at least once per summer for the past 12 years now. I’ve missed maybe one or two summers, but for the most part, I love going to Renaissance Faires and make it a priority to go to them when they are happening where I live, which has been in the late summer. So when you tell me there is a Rom-Com book taking place at a Renaissance Faire, I am all over that.

Our heroine, Emily is staying the summer with her older sister to help her recover from her accident. She ends up playing a tavern wench in a small town’s volunteer-run Renaissance Faire due to her niece also wanting to volunteer and needing an adult supervisor. Emily immediately butts head with the guy in charge of the Faire, Simon. He’s very strict on how the Faire runs and wants everything to be perfect, and, to him, Emily is just not taking the Faire as seriously as she should. When the Faire actually starts up, however, Simon plays an incredibly attractive and flirty pirate, which may just be too hard for a tavern wench to pass up.

The Renaissance Faire character flirting was definitely the highlight of the novel. I mean, who can turn down a sexy pirate in leather pants? The twos banter between each other in their characters was just a lot of fun. Simon has been playing the part of Captain Blackthorn for several years now while Emily is completely new to the acting in a Faire. However, Emily isn’t one to be caught off guard easily, so she can match the seasoned Faire actor’s improv.

While their Renaissance personas definitely had a lot of chemistry, I don’t think their actual personalities had very much chemistry at all. That’s actually part of the turmoil that Emily has to go through while figuring out her relationship with Simon, but I just didn’t see how Simon and Emily ended up falling for each other in the first place. I understand that it’s supposed to be a hate to love relationship, but the hate seemed pretty forced as it was just the two of them not simply seeing eye-to-eye when they first meet, and we don’t really see that hate turn into love. I wish there was another layer that we got to see so we could better understand where the feelings are coming from. It mostly seems like the attraction of the Faire characters turned into attraction to the person. It just wasn’t as developed as I would’ve liked.

Additionally, this is just a minor complaint, but I don’t see how a volunteer-lead fundraiser Faire could get to be so big in this very small town. The amount of work that these volunteers have to do, working two 12ish hour shifts on the weekend for 10 weeks straight without being paid is a lot. I feel like more volunteers would cycle in and out throughout the day. True, there are acts and vendors that come to be in the Faire and are paid, but the townees that are in it for no-pay deserve a bit more credit for their hard work. This is just me being super nit-picky about the logistics of a Renaissance Faire and not so much a critical review of the book itself. I think me being a seasoned Ren-Faire attendee felt bad that these fictional characters weren’t being paid. xD

I still had a lot of fun reading this, and it’s as quick and easy of a read as many other adult romances. I’d recommend if the premise sounds fun to you. It sounds like this is going to be a series of romance books centered around this Faire, and I always enjoy reading series in order.

See this review on Goodreads.