Well Played by Jen DeLuca
My star rating 3 ⭐
Spice rating 🌶🌶 (Tabasco sauce), scenes briefly described but no smutty words.
Romance novel with renaissance fair flare!
I enjoy anticipation and tension/ slow build. This story lacked that, and things seemed to progress quite quickly. I enjoyed it but for me, I lost that spark inside of me that connected me to the characters and story overall. I didn’t enjoy it as much as book 1 ‘Well Met’, but did still love the characters and kind of want to be friends with them. I didn’t get as much renaissance cosiness from it as I did with book one ‘Well met’, but as a standalone book, it was cute.
The story was a different format and flow to the usual and it didn’t gel with me as much as I’d thought it would. That’s not to say I didn’t still enjoy it though. I just didn’t feel as emersed in it as I’d like to have been. I quite literally lost myself in book one and found solace in the pages and characters, and I thought book two would pull me straight in too! I do still love the world that Jen has created around the Ren fair and group of friends!
When I really sat, focused and read the last quarter without interruption, the story came back to life more for me! I really enjoyed the last parts of the storyline and felt myself going through the same emotions as the main character ‘Stacey’. I was so angry at Daniel when shit went down, and I actually gasped at some parts, but when he explained, my heart warmed and It was everything I needed in order to turn around the sad situation. The ending was cute, refreshing and relatable and I found myself so happy for the characters. There happily ever after was delightful.
Tropes and points:
– Mistaken identity/ Catfishing
– Friends to lovers
– Second chances
– Curvy MFC
– Unique story. Different from mainstream romance books
– I read the hardback afterlight special edition.
– It took me around three weeks of very limited reading to finish. Overall I could’ve read it in a few days if I were to read it on my kindle, but I often find paperbacks longer to get through since I read at night and mainly read on kindle.
Thank you for reading. Let me know whether you have read this book and what you think?
Stay wonderful!
No Comments