Well Met (Well Met, #1)

by Jen DeLuca

[EBookObsessed]

Well Met is a fun time at the Faire.

Emily has come to the little town of Willow Creek to take care of her sister and her niece while her sister recovers from a car accident. Her niece is very excited to be part of the Renaissance Faire which the school puts on each summer for fund raising. Unfortunately for Emily, that means a parent or guardian also needs to volunteer to keep on eye on the minor. Emily decides to make the best of it but no matter what she does or says, it doesn’t seem to be good enough to please Simon, who is the organizer of the event. She didn’t fill in her volunteer form correctly. He doesn’t think she put enough effort into her Faire name. She isn’t putting enough effort into her character. Emily is having fun and making friends and it all would be a great time without Faire killjoy Simon around.

Simon’s brother started the Faire and after his death three years ago, Simon has taken over the reigns in his brother’s memory, but Simon is convinced the only way to put on the Faire each year is the same way his brother did and he won’t hear any suggestions from Emily about things to improve the experience.

After weeks of preparation, the Faire finally opens and most surprisingly to Emily is the fact that, Emma the tavern wench (Emily) finds that flirting with the pirate Captain Blackthorne (Simon) to be very simulating indeed. If only Emily could stand to spend time with Simon out of costume. Yet as their stage personalities spend more time together, Emily starts imagining what it would be like if only they could keep this chemistry going outside of Faire weekends.

While this story and the Faire is set for the Renaissance, it has a definite Pride and Prejudice feel between Simon and Emily. It is told in first person, so we never get complete insight into Simon, but Emily’s first meeting with Simon where he complains that she doesn’t fill in her volunteer form correctly and that she isn’t taking the whole thing seriously, sets up Emily’s antagonism to Simon, and she sees all future interactions with Simon as his attacks against her because he must not like her. We eventually learn that Simon (like Darcy in P&P) has been mooning over Emily unaware that she disliked him so much. He only stays away when he thinks she is falling for Mitch, the gym teacher, who flirts with all the women and who is our stand in for Mr. Wickham so to speak but without the bad intentions.

Part of Emily’s problem is that her long-time boyfriend, who she dropped out of college to support while he was in law school, dumped her once he got a job in a prestigious law firm since a college-dropout, waitress girlfriend made him look bad. Her break up was why she was free to move to Maryland and help her sister, but it also kept whispering dark thoughts to Emily about her worthiness and you just wanted to shake her after awhile because she never allowed herself to just enjoy the good things coming her way. There was always a whisper of doubt questioning whether or not she would be pushed aside once again.

I enjoyed the telling of this story and I also enjoyed the backdrop of the Faire. If you have ever attended a Renaissance Faire, it made me appreciate more the hard work the actors put into the event as well as how much fun it must be to truly be a part of it.

This is a first novel for author Jen Deluca and it was a very enjoyable story.

Received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

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