A review by margueritestjust
Well Met by Jen DeLuca

lighthearted medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

The Ren faire setting was the best part of this book.  It's very clear that the author has spent a long time in that setting, and it really came through in the writing.  Overall, this is probably my least favorite of the "romcoms" that I've read so far this summer.  I've come to the conclusion that I really don't enjoy the whole "enemies to lovers" trope as it is in romcoms today, as most of the time in the fiction that I've read, it just turns out that they're "~~enemies~~" just so that the author can do "enemies to lovers" rather than something that the characters actually have work through and get over their own flaws as people and decide if loving that person is worth it despite their flaws.  Simon and Emily hating each other just seemed so.....baseless.  He's like "how dare you choose your Ren faire name to be Emma when your name is Emily" and "how dare you have filled out this form wrong".  He just seems to hate her for no reason at all, and it makes his falling in love with her later seem completely out of nowhere.  And I couldn't figure out for the life of me why she would fall in love back.  He was just a jerk.  As I've mentioned before, I really just don't get stories where the main characters are like "this person despises me and I despise them but like....they're hot."

Then near the conclusion of the story, after
Emily and Simon have gotten together, Emily and Simon have this massive fight, where Emily doesn't communicate with Simon about what she wants, and she gets upset when he doesn't somehow telepathically read her mind about this.  She's so insecure about their relationship that when they get back together, it feels really jarring because she never gets to a place where she feels secure about herself.  It's not like romcoms always have to have the most healthy relationships displayed, but this just felt really...rushed.  They weren't together, suddenly they are together and have lots of sex together, and then suddenly they're not together anymore.  It's a last-minute conflict that comes out of nowhere and doesn't have enough time to get resolved before they have to get to happily ever after, and it makes me feel like neither of them were really ready for this relationship.  Their flaws are too focused on in this book, to the detriment of the actual romance.  As a side note: both of them should go to therapy.
 

Overall, kind of a meh forgettable story - if not for the Ren faire setting, it really wouldn't rate above 2 stars for me.  Someone used "Hallmark film" to describe this, and that feels very apt.  Still, a somewhat fun summer read.  
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