This book is really mislabled. It’s promoted as an angel romance, but the hero, Jesse Savage (terrible name, that) is not an angel – he’s a ghost. A very substantial ghost, but still a ghost – not an angel. Angels are not humans come back from the dead!

Faithless Angel was very slow to get started and for awhile I was wondering what the heck was going on, until the pieces of the story slowly began to fall in place. Jesse and his younger brother and sister lived in a small Texas town called Reunion. When their father left and their mother drank herself to death, Jesse took over the care of his younger siblings. He became a police officer, but since the pay was so paltry they moved to Houston. Jesse’s brother became involved in drugs, and when he cheated a dealer, he, Jesse and their sister were killed.

Jesse finds himself outside a teen shelter called Faith’s House. He has a vague sense that he is to be the redemption of its supervisor, Faith Jansen. Faith had a young ward killed in a traffic accident and has let her shelter drift while she wallows in angst. Faith is so wrapped up in her own grief that she can’t see that there are others who need her.

After the afore mentioned slow start, Faithless Angel picks up speed, but the story and characters never quite jelled for me. Jesse is supposed to help Faith, but he spends an inordinate time teasing her sexually. He gets her all aroused and then says no and runs off leaving them both frustrated, for no apparent reason. Faith wallowed in her grief to the point where I was ready to scream, “Get over it, woman!” I was sorry for her and felt terrible that she had lost her ward, but there were dozens of hurt and lonely children who needed her help while she almost savored her own pain.

The ending of Faithless Angel left me surprised and was a good closure to the story, but overall the book was hampered by a too slow start and characters whom I never really warmed up to.