Faith Calhoun was almost forty when she walked in on her husband screwing someone else.
Talk about a terrible way to end what had admittedly not been an iconic decade of her life.
After serving him divorce papers—on her birthday—she heads straight to her favorite bar, where the ultra-hot bartender plies her with drinks to take the edge off.
They end up tumbling into bed together.
That part’s not bad—in fact, it’s really, really good—except in the morning, he rejects her too, and somehow, that rejection is even worse than the first one. Especially when he insists he needs to remain in her life to ensure she’s protected.
From what? Her gossipy neighbors?
Oh, and let’s not forget all the strange occurrences that are getting harder and harder to explain away.
First, there’s a wolf in her house. A real, live, massive wolf. Then the house is attacked and nearly destroyed by some unknown—and unseen—enemy, and, get this, the wolf saves her. Then the bartender tells her he’s a wolf too. It’s like something out of her favorite shifter romance novel—except she’s living it!
And then there’s the icing on the Mikail, the bartender-slash-wolf, tells her she’s a faery princess.
Maybe this week isn’t so bad after all.
If you overlook the reason he kept her identity a the enemies she didn’t know she had want to kill her, and now that she’s been outed.
I’ve read to 25% and I’m not going to finish it. I picked it up because the heroine is described as 40 years old. She comes across as in her 20s and seems dumb. There’s no shock for her after discovering werewolves and fae. Or that she slept with her werewolf protector. She just relates everything to the fantasy romance novels she reads. I don’t know. I’m just not enjoying it so I’m marking it DNF and moving on.
Faith’s life is turned upside down and she then makes a decision that changes her life. Throughout this story Faith changes from an insecure woman to one that takes her life by the scruff of the neck and lives it to the fullest. She finds someone in Mikail, who believes in her, and her abilities and that fuels her fire to make life-changing decisions. Faith takes some real knocks during this book and there are some real up and downs and some outcomes that you would never have expected. This is a great story and it a very good start to the series.
I felt pretty sad for Faith having been kept from her birthright all her life. I know it was done to protect her, but truth be told, she’d had a pretty shitty adult life and where were her protectors then? So, suddenly discovering you’re a faery princess means things must be looking up. Right? Well, to a point. With two wolf shifters by her side, there’s a whole new world to explore, but Faerell doesn’t welcome these new arrivals with open arms. Mikail has been protecting Faith since the day she was born, so it’s no surprise his feelings have developed into something much deeper over time. However, his conflicting emotions kept me on the fence for quite a while in determining whether he was a worthy hero or just a fool that was too blind to see times had changed. Dru, however, was a kick-ass wolf shifter that took no shit, even though she sounded like she’d just walked off the runway for Victoria’s Secret. There were also some unresolved feelings between her and Faith at the start. Perhaps the one thing I found most surprisingly was how calmly Faith accepted this hitherto hidden world and, in particular, her faery powers. She took everything in her stride, even the fact that everyone seemed to be trying to kill her. The immortality aspect of faery and shifter lives threw me a bit though, because if Faith was forty years old, when do faeries stop aging if they live forever? I thoroughly enjoyed this book and look forward to Tessa and Rollo’s story.
Faith has made a habit of coming to this bar to drink her woes away and it also helps that the bartender has a good ear and it helps that he's good to look at. What are the chance though, especially after I blurt out how I caught my husband eating some other woman in my bed on my birthday! And I was going to ask him for a birthday present, exactly what he was doing to her.
Mikail, has been watching Faith since she was born and put into his care by her mother, the fairy Queen Here it's 40 years later and still no word to go back to their world with his special cargo the unknowing princess. But after so many years of watching her how can he not make her birthday wish come true? How could he not develop feelings for her?
Mikail has been a Watcher for thousands of years and now that he's back home he must make sure that Faith's father doesn't meet out the same to her as he did to her mother.
Very intriguing, full of magic and action story, it will keep you glued to the book.
This is a fiction book, so I suspended my belief. It makes reading fiction much better. Having said that, the story bustles along nicely and develops the characters as it goes. Nice variety of action so you dont get bored. My main plus point is this is a exactly what it says - a complete story. Yes there are follow ups, but you are not left frustrated waiting for the ending. Follow ups will always be there as the character progresses through their life. This is a proper stand alone book - such a nice change. Having said that I want to know how Faith's life progresses so will by the next set of books.
There’s a lot going on in ‘Once Rejected, Twice Shy’. Magic, wolves, fairy princesses, shifter bodyguards, alternate realms, just about everything you could ask for in a parafantasy novel. I really enjoyed the story, and the world building and dynamic between the main characters, kept me intrigued until the very end.
This is the second book I’ve read by TJ Bell but I know it won’t be the last. She knows how to keep her reader’s interest and I’m looking forward to the next novel in this series, as well as the third.
This story is riddled with deception and full of highly stubborn characters. It's well written and intriguing. There is a slow burn romance, between a stubborn protector and his insecure charge. It's a really good read. I'm looking forward to reading more from the Faerell series.
Supernatural Romance, Paranormal Romance, Fantasy Fiction, Second Chance Romance, Age-Gap Romance, Royal Romance, Protector/Bodyguard Romance, Interspecies Romance and Magical Adventure stories.
I got this book as a free download, from the description of it, it sounded just like my cup of tea. Overall it was a fun read, even though there was a lot going on and I would have preferred to get to know the main characters better. It felt a bit rushed and some plots did not make a lot of sense to me, but there was good chemistry between our heroes. I hope that some questions will be answered in the upcoming books, but I think I might give it a miss.
3.5-4 stars. I loved that the heroine was 40. Thank you for making a fantasy heroine older than 20. She even jokes about ‘heroine’s always get their powers at 18!’.
Fun set up. Fae and wolf shifter universe. The heroine has been in hiding for her protection but doesn’t know about her real family or that she’s Fae. Hero is her body guard.
Faith's point of view is smoothly interwoven and contrasted with Mikhail's throughout, making their slow burn romance believable, humorous, and enjoyable for us readers. Their interchanging points of view also keep us in the middle of the constantly evolving action and keep us fully absorbed in this parallel world.
Not to my taste. While I appreciate the inclusion of an older woman, the relationship was stilted, the plot (she's queen and everybody just accepts her) is a little unformed and it ends rather abruptly. I want more tension, more development in a paranormal romance like this. DNF the other two in this three book package.
This was a unique and awesome paranormal romance book! I loved the fairy and werewolf combination in addition to having a middle aged female main character, very refreshing.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
Not really sure why I persevered so long- none of the characters really seemed to be thinking things through or having much motivation (it felt like a lot of what they did was too move the plot forward, rather than something that a person would actually do) The relationship was also incredibly creepy, yes I know they only got together when Faith is 40, but if Mikhail has been watching over her since birth that just feels icky.