Well Played by Jen DeLuca Book Review

Well Played by Jen DeLuca. Photo: Amazon UK

Cute and easy read, but it could have done with a less irritating female lead and more realistic character interactions

This is the second title in Jen DeLuca's new series, I've previously reviewed Well Met and I rated it 5 stars because it was utterly adorable and I loved both the idea of the story and the main love interest (Simon) was just delicious as a pirate. So when I saw that DeLuca had a new follow up title based in the same world, I jumped at the chance to read it! Overall, Well Played had cute parts and I enjoyed being back at the Renaissance Faire in Willow Creek, but it just didn't live up to my expectations that were set high from the first novel.

Well Played focuses on Stacey, Emily's best friend from Well Met. Stacey has had a summer fling with Dex, a sexy musician in one of live acts who play every year at the faire. This summer she gets a tad wine drunk and sends a mushy/cringe message to Dex, but it turns out she messaged the general band's account (mortifying). But she received a message back from Dex that sets them off on a whirlwind electronic romance comprised of emails and texts. Little does Stacey know, she's not messaging the person she thinks she is. This may be a bit of a spoiler, but it's extremely obvious and alluded to in the book's synopsis on Amazon soooo, it's Daniel - Dex's cousin and the man who manages the band. After a year of getting to know each other electronically - they soon meet face-to-face and Stacey is in for a major shock when she finds out who she's been digitally falling for. 

Pine by Francine Toon Book Review

 

Pine by Francine Toon. Photo: Amazon UK

Undelivered promises of thrills and gothic chills - is this really the future of 'horror' novels? 

I asked for this book as one of my birthday presents this year - my birthday is in October and I thought Pine by Francine Toon seemed like a great bit of horror literature to read in the spookiest month of them all! However, I was sorely disappointed. As a book publicist by day - I should recognize the power of good review quotes from media publications and the sway it sometimes has on readers. I also should have realized how us publicists cherry-pick quotes to put on the cover. All those quotes calling it 'spine-tingling' and a modern 'gothic horror story' were extremely misleading as that's the kind of book I hoped to pick up - but all those promises went completely undelivered.