In Well Played, Jen DeLuca returns to the delightful world of the Renaissance Faire where she set her first novel, Well Met. Stacey, who loves working as a tavern wench every summer, is unsettled by the engagement of her friends Emily and Simon. Their lives are changing drastically, which makes Stacey realize she's been doing the exact same things--working in a dental office, making sure her mother is in good health, acting as a tavern wench--for years, and there are no changes on her horizon.
On a lonely, drunken whim one night, Stacey sends a message to Dex MacLean of the band The Dueling Kilts, with whom she had a summertime fling. She's horrified in the morning, but Dex replies and turns out to be surprisingly thoughtful via e-mail. Stacey and Dex embark on an epistolary friendship that feels almost like a relationship, until Faire rolls around again, and Stacey discovers that it wasn't actually Dex answering her messages. She's spent the last year falling in love with a virtual stranger.
Poignant, and yet still funny, Well Played is an enjoyable romance full of the what-might-have-beens that every adult has faced at some point. Where Stacey thought her life was headed, where it actually is and where she hopes it can someday go--if she can forgive the deception of "Dex"--make her a very sympathetic heroine. Full of nods to Faire culture and glimpses into small-town life, Well Played is a perfect light read. --Jessica Howard, bookseller at Bookmans, Tucson, Ariz.