Well Met by Jen DeLuca

Narrated by Brittany Pressley

There was quite a bit of pre-publication buzz about Jen Deluca’s Well Met, and positive reviews together with the fact that I’ve enjoyed Brittany Pressley’s work in the past suggested it would be an audiobook I’d enjoy, so I requested a copy for review. The final verdict? Mixed feelings. The narration is excellent, but the story and characters felt somewhat underdeveloped. I also missed the dual PoV that’s common in so many contemporary romances. There’s a reason we don’t get the hero’s perspective, but the lack of it does make him seem rather two-dimensional, which, for a hero-centric reader/listener like me, wasn’t ideal.

After losing her job and breaking up with her long-term boyfriend, Emily has temporarily relocated to the small Maryland town of Willow Creek to be with her older sister, who is recuperating from a car accident. She figures it’s as good a place as any to lick her wounds and figure out where she goes from here. Emily has also assumed the role of ‘Adult in Charge’ when it comes to her niece, Caitlin, and when the story opens has driven her to the local high school on a Saturday morning so that Caitlin can sign up to take part in the town’s annual Renaissance Faire. Cait is very excited about joining the faire for the first time – but Emily isn’t so enthusiastic when she’s informed that because her niece is only fourteen, she won’t be able to ‘do Faire’ unless she’s accompanied by an adult. Gah! But what can Emily do? Cait is so excited and would be SO disappointed not to be able to take part so Emily agrees… although her first glimpse of the gorgeous Mitch – “Tall, blond, muscled, with a great head of hair and a tight T-shirt. Gaston crossed with Captain America with a generic yet mesmerising handsomeness” is what really tips the balance.

Emily fills in the requisite forms and then hands them in to Simon, the faire organiser, only for him to tell her she’s filled them in incorrectly. Emily takes in his immaculate, not-a-hair-out-of-place appearance and his abrasive manner and immediately pegs him as an uptight control freak who’s best avoided, dubbing him the “Ren Faire Killjoy.”

Rehearsals begin and there’s nothing about Simon that makes Emily re-think her initial assessment of him. His determination that things at the faire should be done the way they’ve always been done doesn’t sit well with her, and her questions and suggestions are obviously not welcome, but she won’t have much to do with him once the faire starts for real anyway so it’s no loss. Or that’s what she thinks until she finally sees Simon in his faire persona as the piratical Captain Blackthorne, complete with leather pants, tall boots, guyliner, a rakish grin and an altogether more approachable – nay, flirtatious – demeanour. Something about this version of Simon is most definitely appealing… as is his backside in the leather pants ;)

When the pirate captain and the tavern wench strike up a flirtation as part of the show, Emily actually finds herself enjoying it – although not without wondering at Simon’s transformation from uptight stick-in-the-mud to hot pirate whose kisses melt her brain. It’s not until she learns about Simon’s brother Sean – who died of cancer three summers before – the faire’s original organiser, that she begins to understand Simon’s almost slavish desire not to change anything. She also begins to see what a gargantuan task he’s taken on in running the event, and how even those who’ve been part of it for years can’t see how much it takes out of him, or that he could do with some real help behind the scenes.

The blurb promises an enemies-to-lovers tale and I’m always up for an adversarial couple in a romance – but the reasons for Emily’s dislike are really flimsy and in fact, I found the her careless dismissal of Simon because he pointed out a mistake she made caused her to come across as an ignorant brat. (Plus – as we don’t get his PoV, we don’t know why Simon seems to dislike her or if he’s simply reacting to her obvious disdain and she’s projecting.) Organising an event like that is a massive undertaking, and he’s doing it for free in his spare time (and given he’s a teacher he probably doesn’t get much of that); her attitude was really immature and such an obvious contrivance to get the whole enemies-to-lovers ball rolling. Things improve, fortunately, but while Emily and Simon have things in their pasts and issues with self-esteem and self-worth (she because of the boyfriend who dumped her after she supported him through law school, he because he feels he can never measure up to his brother) they’re not otherwise all that well developed as characters, and most importantly, there’s not a lot of chemistry between them and they don’t spend nearly enough time together for their romance to really develop. The captain and the tavern wench are supposed to be romantically involved as part of the faire’s storyline, but this isn’t made very much of which was a shame; there was a potential for a great fake-relationship story with lots of barbed banter (à la Much Ado About Nothing) but it was an opportunity mostly missed.

Brittany Pressley does a great job with the narration, which is easily the best thing about this audiobook. Her mid-range voice and mellow tones are pleasant and easy on the ear, her pacing is spot on and she differentiates skilfully and effectively between a fairly large number of characters. Her male voices are good – lower in pitch than the women, but not so low as to sound odd or strained – and her English accents are decent (albeit a bit wobbly in places). She does struggle with the Scottish one employed by Mitch’s character though, although he doesn’t have a great deal of dialogue, so it wasn’t too much of an issue. All in all, it’s a very strong, expressive performance that really delivers on the emotional content of the story and definitely contributes a great deal to the listening experience.

To sum up – Well Met is cute, funny in places and poignant in others, but the characterisation is fairly superficial and I never felt as though the characters’ motivations and the relationships between them were fully fleshed-out. Simon is, unfortunately, something of a bland, stereotypical hero although his backstory, when we finally get it, is truly sad and goes some way towards explaining his perfectionism as regards the faire. Mostly, this is the story of a young woman moving on with her life after a bad relationship, finding out about herself and what she wants and making friends and taking the opportunities presented to her by her new community. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it, and it’s not an audiobook I’m likely to listen to again. There are plenty of 4 and 5 star reviews out there that disagree with me however, and if you’re in the mood for a light-hearted, undemanding and very well-performed story, then it might work for you better than it did for me.

Caz