Well Traveled by Jen DeLuca
Description:
“Attorney Lulu Malone lived to work until the day it all went wrong. So, when her cousin Mitch introduces her to the world of Renaissance Faires, she leaps for the turkey legs, taverns, and tarot readers. Sometimes girls just wanna have fun.
The only drawback is Dex MacLean: a guitarist with a killer smile, the Casanova of the Faire . . . and her travelling companion for the summer.
Kilted bad boy Dex has never had to work hard in his life. Touring with his brothers as The Dueling Kilts is going great and there’s a woman for him at every Faire. But when Lulu proves indifferent to his plaid charms and the band’s future is threatened, Dex fears he’s losing it.
Spending days and nights on the road, Lulu and Dex can’t help but grow close.
But summer can’t last forever.
Will they go their separate ways? Or does destiny’s path lie along a shared road?”
My review:
I am giving this book a rating of 5 out of 5.
I love the storyline, especially Louisa finding her way after drastically changing her life at 37 years old. And I’ve never read anything in a Renaissance Faire setting before, which was fun!
Louisa is definitely my favourite character, though the story is told from her perspective – so I guess that’s to be expected. I enjoyed the character development (particularly the storyline of her rediscovering herself after leaving her career behind), and appreciated the effort that had clearly been put in to crafting believable relationships between the protagonist and other characters. I also love Benedick, the cat – though kept thinking his name should’ve been ‘Benedict’, instead! While I’m not usually a fan of men having long hair (personal preference!), I’ll make an exception for Dex – he was certainly a believable, likeable character and I’d love to read more stories about his and Lulu’s adventures. I also liked Lulu’s grandmother – although she didn’t appear in the story much, she reminded me of my late Nan, who was an amazing person with a fab sense of humour.
The setting was so well written you could practically hear the music and sizzle from cooking stations, smell the food, and feel the heat of summer as sun dappled through the trees.
As for the tarot card element, I thoroughly enjoyed the way it was interpretated, and would’ve liked to have seen Lulu try reading for someone else (even just for the comedy angle!).
If I have just one, teeny tiny note that’d improve this book, it’d be to remove the repeated references to characters ‘clucking their tongue’ – aside from not being entirely sure what that means, I rolled my eyes on the several occasions it cropped up, which did pull me out of the story a little.
Otherwise, this was a fantastically fun read from start to finish, and I’d highly recommend it to readers of rom-coms and those who like stories including an element of tarot reading, as well as for people who enjoy a Renaissance Faire setting!
Read in: May 2026
Format: eBook
Disclaimer: I paid to read this eBook via the Kobo platform. All opinions expressed in this review are mine and have not been influenced by the author or publisher in any way. This book review does not contain affiliate links.