Give Me a Shot

Give Me a Shot by Gia de Cadenet, 320 pages

Amateur blacksmith Mo lives a quiet life, teaching blacksmithing at a local folk school when he's not running his auto mechanic shop. Then he meets Jessica, an elite archer who has moved to town to take care of her late sister's things and apparently, to upend Mo's life. Suddenly, the two of them are planning a renaissance faire to help raise funds for the folk school and slowly falling for one another.

This was an OK romance novel. I enjoyed the juxtaposition that Mo was a burly "manly man" who was also extra sensitive to those around him, to the point that his empathy was sometimes a burden to him. However, there were several things I didn't quite buy when it came to this book, which is what has made it fade in the days since I've read it. OK, but nothing new or great.

The Renaissance of Gwen Hathaway

 The Renaissance of Gwen Hathaway by Amy Schumacher, 320 pages. 

Madeline Hathaway hasn't been doing very well since her mom died. The renaissance festival circuit she grew up on hasn't been the same, she and her dad aren't really communicating, and she is compulsively tracking almost every aspect of her life as part of her grieving process. She's been nervous to arrive at her mom's favorite festival, and when she get there she hardly recognizes it. The festival is under new management, and the new owners' son is determined to pull her into the action. He also won't stop calling her Gwen. 

Arthur is determined to be her friend, which includes roping her into playing the princess and going on road trip adventures during the week. And despite the fact that Madeline is determined not to let herself care about anyone else she could one day lose, she finds herself caring about him anyway. 

This was a pretty cute young adult novel. Both Madeline and Arthur are determined that nobody could actually find them attractive, and I found that added an interesting dynamic to their relationship. It also fed into the biggest problem I had with the book, which is that a lot of characters made a lot of wildly unfounded assumptions, usually based on nothing, and acted as if they were inarguable fact. It was sweet however, and a pretty good portrayal of grief for younger audiences.

Well Traveled

Well Traveled by Jen DeLuca, 305 pages.

Louisa Malone is an attorney at a soul-sucking job where she never seems able to advance. The general terribleness of this finally drives her to a small mental breakdown while visiting a Renaissance Faire on a work trip, where she decides to throw her phone in a tub of water. Intervention from her cousin Mitch and acquaintance Stacey (from Well Matched and Well Played, respectively) soon has her traveling with The Dueling Kilts band and on a complete tech detox for a month or two while she gets her head on straight and decides what to do next. She finds herself starting to be Lulu again, rather than Louisa, and finds that she likes the change. She also finds that she likes the Kilt's guitarist, Dex MacLean (also from Well Played actually) who has a reputation for sleeping around and not much else. But soon Lulu discovers there's more to both herself and him than meets the eye. It's just a shame that their time together has an expiration date. 

This romance novel was fun to read, but I've got to admit that I found a lot of the character development pretty hard to buy. It felt like a lot of character changes, especially in Dex, were made more because the author couldn't have Lulu in love with someone terrible than from any sort of internal place. I also noticed that by the end they don't seem to actually have any common interests, which always makes it a little hard for me to buy a relationship. But! I did have fun reading it, and if you don't think to hard about it the novel can definitely be a good time, especially since we're back in a proper Renaissance Faire atmosphere for pretty much this entire book, which is ultimately why I read them.

Well Matched

 Well Matched by Jen DeLuca, 336 pages.

April is a forty-year-old single mom who is getting ready to send her daughter off to college and sell her house in small town Willow Creek to get an apartment in the city. When her friend Mitch Malone asks her to pretend to be his girlfriend for a family dinner (so his family will take him seriously and stop asking him about his relationships) in exchange for home repairs she's hesitant, because she's been single for a long time and also this is an insane request, but they're friends and it doesn't seem like a big deal so she agrees. But somehow situations keep happening where they have to pretend again and soon enough there are real feelings in their fake dating. 

A lot of this book is ultimately about April dealing with her own anxieties; about dating a younger man (who may want kids she can't have one day), about dating one of her daughter's teachers, about Mitch's promiscuous nature, about what her neighbors will say. Most of these anxieties are based on nothing but conjecture, but that's clinical anxiety for you (I think part of this book's happy ending probably should have been April getting a therapist). This book is very sweet and fun, and I'm probably going to end up reading all the books in the series (I wrote about the proceeding book, Well Played, last October, and that couple makes a cameo in this book). Much less Renaissance Faire in this book, which I found a little disappointing personally, but that wasn't the book's fault.

Well Played

 Well Played by Jen DeLuca, 323 pages.

When Stacey's friends get engaged it makes it horribly clear to her just how small she's allowed her small town life to get. Her life is pretty much just hanging out in her "apartment" above her parents' garage, working as a receptionist for a dentist, and volunteering at the local renaissance faire for a month a year (that part is her favorite). So naturally she drunk messages her summer hook-up talking about how much she wants to actually get to know him as a person. The more surprising thing is that he messages her back. Even more surprising then that, the usually emotionally shut-off and monosyllabic Dex is writing long, emotionally honest messages that don't sound like him at all. Yet Stacey finds herself falling for the man behind the screen.

So this is a really interesting book, because the "twist" is obvious from the front cover. The person she's messaging is not Dex, but his cousin Daniel, as described in chapter one. However, all of the things that make this extremely obvious to the reader are not things Stacey could know (like the cover art). Which puts the reader in an interesting scenario of knowing exactly what's going on while also not being extremely frustrated by a protagonist to stupid to pick up on the world around them (which I've seen in similar stories).

I picked up this book because I was really missing performing in the renaissance faire for the last couple of years (on account of plague), and I'm so happy I did. It's obvious from the first chapter (even before I checked her bio) that this is a world that the author has been a part of. Outside of all of that, this is a stupid cute story with extremely low stakes. By the end it reminds me a little of the movie "10 Things I Hate About You," which can only be a compliment. 

Fun Fact: This is technically book two in a series, but that's not obvious anywhere, so don't worry about starting here. (I did)