Once Ghosted, Twice Shy

I enjoyed this story a lot!

Contemporary romance isn’t usually my thing, but I’m so desperate to get another f/f historical romance out of Alyssa Cole (having loved “That Could Be Enough”) that I decided to triangulate by picking up “Once Ghosted, Twice Shy” for the f/f side, and her Loyal League series for the historical side. I still want more f/f historicals but at least I get more Alyssa Cole. I really enjoyed this very NYC second-chance story of two equally delightful women whose intended brief fling looked to turn into something more...until it didn’t, and how they negotiated around the lingering hurt to put the pieces back together again. The two protagonists are so vividly real as people and Cole’s voice is masterful--both the narrative voice and the voicing of the two rather different characters. The structure followed the common path of alternating viewpoints, but then took the interesting approach of jumping back and forth between their original meeting and their second-chance get-together. It worked perfectly to let the explanations unfold without resorting to talking heads, while leaving the reader in the same suspense as to what had happened that the “ghosted” character was in. The story is relatively short (novella length) so just the right bite-size for reading in a single session.