#well met

[nainainomi]

Am I dead. Like the crew I am very shocked by Luffy's greetings.

[mantra4ia]

Brilliantly Explained! 🔥 #palestine #israel #usa #uk #politics #congress...

"If you don't want Hamas to take the center of the field, then you take the center of the field" on behalf of Palestinians

[amnestria-the-elf]

Never thought I'd be so happy to hear Wyll say these two silly words

[Wyll: Well met.]

Talindra is pretty happy about it too

[bookishfreedom]

I’ve been burning my way through this series on audio, and I’m OBSESSED ✨

[jheanelashlee]

“I mean it in the way that resonates

For me,

I mean it in the way that

I feel love knowing

That there is a God who loved us all so much

That they put a little piece of themselves into

Creation.

or maybe this is the sort of

Chicken and egg situation.

Is God all of us sitting in the Mandelbrot in meditation.

All of us a fractal of the experience?

All of us thinking and feeling ourselves in meditation

Piecing the All together ?

While our hearts beat and beat and beat

Moving through each feeling .

Each lesson?

If I were to give an apology it would be like this:

You are enough.

Will forever be enough.

Any attempt to subtract from you

still results in you being wholly and fully and completely enough.

When things are added to you.

It emphasizes how infinite you are.

Because nothing can affect the whole

That you are.

What’s taken

what’s added

is an illusion of other

Yet still it comes from you

And also

Resides in you

When someone

or

something tries to trick you

that somehow they can degrade you

Your enough-ness, your wholeness…

The one sitting in meditation says

“It is a false belief system that

Got programmed into you.

imposed upon you….

But also I see the value in a lesson”

Because again.

You are,

the manifestation of God

in a human body.

Each and every one and thing of us.

God’s creation

in meditation

An acknowledgement that

you are.

And thus, forever will be

infinitely

Whole.

I see God in you

And I hate fighting

I’m disconnected enough -

Can we continue loving each other now?”

-Jheanel Brown

[booksbeyondimagining]

I've been getting into nail polish a lot lately thanks to my suddenly breaking a nail biting habit of 20+ years (yup) and I couldn't help but notice how well this shade matches the cover of Well Met by Jen DeLuca.

(Nail polish is Pound the Pave-mint from Sally Hansen X-treme Wear)

[evermorelore]

Wanted to try and make an alternative cover for one of my favorite book series. I’m not sure if this feels finished but I really like the stage it’s at nevertheless.

[stardustandrockets]

I recently listened to the audio of Well Traveled by Jen DeLuca, and while it wasn't my favorite of the series (that will always go to Well Met), it was fun. I didn't buy into Lulu and Dex as a couple because it seemed too insta-attraction on his end. As an ace person who definitely isn't attracted to people based on looks, I find insta-attraction/insta-love in books almost a turn-off. But I liked Lulu as a character. She was kind of lost in where she wanted to go with life and found herself spontaneously quitting her job and traveling with a band that does the ren faire circuit. It's was interesting to see the faires from kind of an outside perspective compared to the other three books in the series.

I paired the book with three tarot cards that have meaning to the story: Death, 8 of Cups, and the King of Wands (seen here as the Monarch of Wands). I absolutely love my tarot deck from @/binxolsen (insta)! I'm not well versed in what the cards mean, but I love the art and that the deck is gender inclusive, whereas general tarot decks can be more gendered.

Do you do tarot or affirmations?

[naivesilver]

Hey friend i got this question. Have you ever read pinocchio: vampire slayer and watched pinocchio 3000 k? Both of them are really good😁 and i love them💖💖💖

Hi! I've read PVS a couple years ago and I liked it IMMENSELY - even bought myself a physical copy so I could support the authors 💞 Pinocchio 3000 is still in my to watch list, though. I think I need the right amount of courage to watch it LMAO

[morgan--reads]

Well Met - Jen DeLuca

Summary: After moving to the small town of Willow Creek to help her sister after a car accident, Emily gets drawn into volunteering at the local Renaissance Faire as a tavern wench. Her growing sense of belonging is threatened by Simon, the uptight English teacher that runs the faire. But as Simon settles into his pirate role for the faire, Emily finds there’s more to him that meets the eye.

Quote: “And someday, I wanted someone who would love me. Not for what I could do for them, but for who I was to them.”

My rating: 3.0/5.0   Goodreads: 3.85/5.0 

Review: Fun and occasionally it tugs at the heart-strings, but ultimately this book is pretty forgettable. Emily’s growing into someone who believes she deserves love and a chance to follow her dreams is the most compelling part of the story, but the family elements are also sweet. The enemies to lovers angle falls a little flat by comparison. Simon is straight-up mean to her, often out of jealousy, and their relationship comes out of nowhere. They do have decent chemistry once they decide they like each other, but the pacing makes the happy ending feel a little rushed and I was rooting more for the sexually-charged fantasy of the pirate and the tavern wench than I ever was for Simon and Emily.

[bruiselikeviolets]

read in 2023: well met by jen deluca

As your hands are bound together now, so your lives and spirits are joined in a union of love and trust. Above you are the stars and below you is the earth. Like the stars, your love should be a constant source of light, and like the earth, a firm foundation from which to grow.

[magic-multicolored-miracle]

I started reading Well Met by Jen DeLuca last night, and only got a few chapters in. But fuck me, it has me in a vice grip of emotions.

I don't even care that much about the romance (although finding love at a ren faire is the dream tbh) because of everything else I'm feeling. In many ways, Emily Parker is me:

a somewhat strained by time/distance relationship with her older sister, but Emily is still willing to drop absolutely everything for her in a time of crisis

Putting her family's needs and wants above her own

a teenaged niece and a relationship with her that, because of an age difference of only about 10 years, is an odd cross between friend and "Adult in Charge"

Finding friendship that feels like family and a place that feels like Home in the faire that she joined on a whim (or rather because said niece wanted to do it and needed an adult to join with her)

And it is quickly obvious that the author, like the show runners of "American Princess" and very unlike many 'renaissance faire episodes' of shows, has not only been to faires but has worked and lived them. The behind the scenes culture of and propensity for half-garbing and faire names is Spot On.

[bookwyrmshoard]

Well Met, by Jen DeLuca

A charming, delightful romance set in and around a small Renaissance Faire, Well Met was a welcome, summery treat in the middle of January. I loved Emily, whose first-person narration gives the book its tone and perspective. On the heels of a breakup that left her questioning her own worth, Emily left her jobs in the city to take care of her sister and niece as April (a single mom) recovers from a devastating car accident. April’s small town hosts an annual RenFaire, and Caitlin, Emily’s teenage niece, wants to volunteer, but she can’t do so without an adult guardian. So Emily finds herself drafted into playing one of the two “tavern wenches” for the duration of the Faire. Too bad the Faire’s organizer, high-school English teacher Simon Graham, has taken such a dislike to her. Although his piratical alter-ego certainly seems to like her, flirting with “Emma,” her tavern-wench persona, at every opportunity. It promises to be an interesting summer.

Jen DeLuca deftly juggles summer fun, humor, and real emotion, and she gets the balance between her main characters’ antagonism and their undeniable attraction just right. Enemies-to-lovers isn’t usually one of my favorite tropes, but it works really well here, in part because Simon and Emily are never really enemies. Simon appears to disapprove of Emily, which makes her bristle and judge him right back. But there are moments of sympathy and understanding between them, even relatively early on, that offer strong hints that they are misjudging one another and could easily become friends if they took the time to get to know each other a little better.

Because we’re always in Emily’s head, never in Simon’s, we see the whole relationship from her perspective. That can be limiting in a romance, but DeLuca does an excellent job of letting the reader know there’s more going on in Simon’s emotional life than Emily initially recognizes. And their physical attraction is written perfectly, particularly the swoon-worthy kissing scenes (omg, that sonnet scene!) I also appreciate that Emily’s emotional arc isn’t centered solely around her relationship with Simon; it’s also about her own self-worth, her relationships in general and with her sister in particular, and discovering what she wants to do with her life. Her growth comes, and needs to come, on all those fronts.

If I have any complaints about Well Met, it’s that the setting is so generic. I don’t mean the RenFaire; it’s clear that DeLuca has some background there, and she really makes it come alive. Likewise, I suspect she has some theater background, because she absolutely nails the feeling of freedom that can come with playing someone different from your everyday self. But her fictional small Maryland town is so bland and generic, it could be almost anywhere. (Well, anywhere that has woods nearby; it’s clearly not southern Arizona.) I lived in Maryland for a lot of my childhood, much of that near a small town; I grew up playing in the woods. None of DeLuca’s vague descriptions said “Maryland” to me. Take the Faire woods, for instance. There’s very little description of them: no mention of what kind of trees there are or how tall, nor of the understory plants, and these woods are apparently devoid of both scents and sounds. And although DeLuca mentions the heat occasionally, and how dirty the Faire volunteers get, she mostly leaves out the summer humidity that can make the air feel like thick soup and leaves you feeling hot, sweaty, and ennervated. (Also, it never rains on Faire weekends, which is wildly unlikely.)

But that’s a minor quibble in a book that is otherwise a delightful, summery concoction of love, friendship, and finding your place. I loved it, and can’t wait to read the other books in the series.

[deiumjeito]

aesthetic | Well Traveled - Jen DeLuca

[amandaprahl]

for as much as i read (and write about) the romance genre now, i think some people might be surprised that i really started reading actual genre romance a few years ago.

i clearly remember browsing a bookstore one day. i had just finished an mfa program where I found myself constantly having to defend my pop culture and artistic choices against snobbery from my “edgier” peers, and that had an impact on even what i chose for myself. and then i saw this adorable, pastel, cartoony book, picked it up, and it had everything i love. a romance inspired by ren faires (and sexy captain hook from ouat), packed with lit nerd jokes and amazing banter? sign me up! and that, really, was my gateway into falling in love with genre romance, not just books with romantic subplots.

so as i start making these embroidered pieces based on book covers, it only seemed right to make on based on that book: WELL MET by Jen DeLuca, with cover art by Colleen Reinhart . cheers to them, to this series, and to the world of romance books everywhere 💕

meet me on bookstagram !

[sandythereadingcafe]

REVIEW

WELL TRAVELLED (Well Met 4) by Jen DeLuca at The Reading Cafe:

‘a fun, enjoyable, sweet and sexy story,‘

http://www.thereadingcafe.com/well-traveled-by-jen-deluca-a-review/