How to Find a Nameless Fae by AJ Lancaster offers a fresh and charming twist on the classic Rumplestiltskin fairy tale, blending cozy fantasy with a spicy romance. The story centers on Princess Gisele, a middle-aged heroine determined to break a decades-old bargain that has been disrupting her life. Instead of encountering an evil sorcerer, she finds herself magically bound to a scholarly, nameless fae lord who is every bit her nemesis. Their reluctant partnership is full of sharp wit and slow-burning chemistry, made even more entertaining by a sentient magical house that adds a playful and unique dimension to the story.
Lancaster skillfully balances humor, fantasy, and romance, creating characters who feel real and relatable despite their magical circumstances. The novel’s cozy, intimate tone, combined with clever world-building, makes it a standout addition to the fairy tale retelling subgenre. This book will appeal to readers who enjoy character-driven fantasy romance with a healthy dose of spice and a touch of whimsy.

A witty, fun read.

A standalone read which sees a cursed princess and her search for a specific fae prince.

🧚‍♀️ Bookish Thoughts
This was a cute fairy tale romance retelling! It was definitely slower paced than I expected, but I still enjoyed the book. I loved that both MCs were older! Princess Gisele is in her 40s and an absolute baddie. And the sentient house? Iconic. I’m also officially jealous because I want a talking cat now.

✨ What to Expect
• Fae MMC
• Human Princess FMC
• Forced proximity
• Magical bargain
• Enemies to lovers

📖 Final Score: 3.5 stars
📅 Pub Date: June 26, 2025
📝 Thank you to Victory Editing and NetGalley for the advanced copy. All thoughts are my own.

Princess Gisele waited her whole life to be claimed as first born by the sorcerer who helped her mother once to spin straw into gold.
Even so she turned forty still he hasn´t shown up. Over the year live became harder and harder for her. She has chaotic magic and nobody wants to be around her any longer. She lives a live beside her family, has no real bond to her twin brother or the younger one. So enough is enough and Gisele is fed up waiting for her malediction to show up.
Instead she is going in search of him and what she finds when she stumbles open him is not what she expected. Instead of an evil person she finds a well educated person who lives in a magical house who never wanted to do cause her any harm, let alone claim the first born. She fled his realm into the mortal world so his enemy couldn´t track him any longer when he gave up his real name. Unfortunately now his real name is lost which means the magical bond between the two can´t easily be re done.
While both of them try to find a way to remove the claim the old enemy is closing in.


This re telling of Rumpelstilskin was fun to read!
The writing is well done. It is easy and nice to read and you get easily lost in the story.
I really enjoyed the twist the story got here. I mean he never intended to have a claim on a first bone only used it as he assume humans would do all to avoid it but this didn´t keep he real name save and this mess happened instead.

Gisele as middle-aged heroine is well written. I liked her right from the start and felt really sorry for her that she doesn´t has a real connection to her family. How alone she must have felt all these years. Still she is a nice person. How she meets Mal, how she acts about him, how she start really seeing him made her even more likable to me.

Mal is absolutely not what I expected Rumpelstilskin to be like. He is so great! That he is running from an enemy, never intended for Gisele to have such a hard live and then lost track of time is giving a well known story such a great new twist!
He was all these years also alone, was afraid to get close to anybody in fear his enemy could find him. That his whole live is changing the minute Gisele steps into his live is the best that could happen to him. I really like how his character is opening up, how he is changing during the story.

How the relationship between both is changing, how their feelings toward each other are changing is well and good written. I didn´t expect the added spice here.

Skymallow, Mal´s house, is so unbelievable great written! I really like this magical home and would love to live in it myself. The idea how it interacts with its inhabitants, what connection they have is wonderfully woven into this story.

Also all the other characters Gisele is meeting while being in fairy, how they all interact, how friendships are build are well interwoven into this story.

Only some parts of the end to patch up everything causing here some deduction in the rating as the way her family relationship was described till then is for me not matching with the end. I can understand why this

Great re telling of this fairy tale for grownups. I can only recommend the book.

I thoroughly enjoyed AJ Lancaster's Stariel series, so I was excited to dive into How to Find a Nameless Fae.

In this standalone novel, Princess Gisele has grown tired of waiting for the evil fae she was promised to at birth to come claim her, so she sets off to find him. But instead of the terrifying sorcerer she's expecting, she finds a sentient (and nosy) house and its nameless lord, who is maybe not as evil as she thought. The debt between them, however, is still causing magical problems, and they are forced to work together to track down the lord's name to break their inconvenient bond.

I loved how cute and whimsical this story was. It was a little predictable, but had lots of fun magic and side characters, and I loved the relationship between our two main characters (also, shout out to female protagonist in her forties at the center of a romantasy!) This was a lovely world to escape to for a bit, and fans of India Holton should definitely give this one a try.

If you like your fairytale retellings with a twist, let me highly recommend this beautiful comfort of a book! How To Find a Nameless Fae is a delightful take on the classic Rumpelstiltskin story, converting it into a charming, cozy romantasy. But this is even a twist on typical romantasy, making the main character, Gisele, an older, understandably impatient heroine who decides to save herself from the curse that's effectively ruined her life.

Shortly after turning forty, Princess Gisele decides it's time to find the evil sorcerer who cursed her before she was even born. Having been stuck in a tower and effectively unable to maintain any sort of relationship with anyone due to said curse, Gisele takes matters into her own hands and goes to find the malediction that didn't have the decency to come back and kidnap her as everyone assumed would happen. Finding her way into the land of the fairies, Gisele is then horrified to find that the evil sorcerer who cursed her is decidedly not evil, not a sorcerer, nor has he realized how much time has passed. But now that she's found him, their cursed bond has only strengthened... and neither of them have any idea of how to break it, save finding the fairy's name that he lost and has basically no hope of finding again.

I can't explain how much joy this book brought me. It's different than most of the fantasy books I've read, but its silliness was amazing and the romantic tension was excellent. It may not be high fantasy, but who needs that when you've got such a fulfilling story?

So many thanks to NetGalley and Victory Editing for giving me a digital ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review!!

Rating: 4.5 stars

Review posted to StoryGraph: June 27, 2025 (https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/21a9c048-4ae8-4d8c-a5e4-cdf6d5225c4a)
Review posted to Instagram: July 26, 2025 (https://www.instagram.com/p/DMk9tmDRMpH/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==)

Review How to Find a Nameless Fae

In How to Find a Nameless Fae, A. J. Lancaster delivers a witty and emotionally engaging retelling of a classic fairytale, with a heroine who finally breaks the typical mold: she’s forty, fierce, and refreshingly real. Determined to break the curse that got worse over time, she finds herself entangled with the culprit: Malediction ("Mal"), a Fae who is equal parts adorable, dangerous, and unexpectedly endearing. With the help of magical creatures (including the scene-stealing Zingiber), their adventure is as heartfelt as it is humorous.

👍 What I liked:
• Older FMC: A true standout. Having a 40-year-old protagonist brought maturity, depth, and relatability to the story. It’s rare to find a fantasy romance that doesn’t focus on barely-adult heroines.
• Humour & banter: The dialogue sparkled with wit and charm. I caught myself laughing out loud at both the banter and the clever internal commentary.
• Refreshing retelling: While inspired by a familiar fairytale, Lancaster crafts something wholly unique. The plot felt fresh and engaging from start to finish.
• Pacing: There wasn’t a single dull moment. From the first chapter, I was hooked.
• Emotional writing: Beyond the humour, Lancaster didn’t shy away from emotional depth. The characters’ vulnerabilities felt genuine, adding layers to both the romance and the plot.
• Malediction: Mal’s character hit that perfect balance of adorable and alluring. He stood out from the typical Fae love interests by feeling real; quirky without being ridiculous, powerful without arrogance.
• Zingiber: I can’t review this book without mentioning Zingiber. I’m officially his number one fan. Every appearance added joy and humour to the story.

👎 What I Didn’t Like:
Honestly, nothing. This book delivered exactly what it promised and more. I finished it feeling both satisfied and already wanting a re-read.

📜 Final Verdict:
How to Find a Nameless Fae is a refreshing, humorous, and heartfelt romantasy that breaks clichés while celebrating everything we love about the genre. From its mature heroine to its unique love interest and its perfect blend of comedy and emotion, this story stands out. Highly recommended for fans of fantasy romance who crave witty banter, a touch of spice, and characters who feel real.
A. J. Lancaster has easily earned a spot on my auto-buy list.

Rating: 5/5 ⭐️
Spice Level: 2/5 🌶

I enjoyed that this was a Rumplestiltskin retelling and that gave it a unique premise from the start.
This is whimsical and sassy and I arm and cozy and full of banter and wit! This was definitely a feel good book with little angst to it.
Also a magical, sentient house that ships the couple? Count me in on that alone!
Highly recommend if you are looking for a cozy hug of a book with snappy banter and a grumpy x sunshine trope!

This Rumpelstiltskin retelling definitely falls into the category of romantasy – and as many other reviewers have pointed out, feels like something that T. Kingfisher could have written. Not that for a hot second am I suggesting that Lancaster is jumping on any kind of bandwagon. But the fairytale setting peopled with three-dimensional, spiky characters coping with a difficult magical problem works really, really well.

Gisele is a joy. I loved that she was a forty-year-old spinster, whose curse had forced her into a miserable solitude – away from everyone in court and her own family. Including her twin brother. By now, the evil sorcerer who bound her to such a grim life is seriously overdue and she decides that enough is enough and she’ll set out to find him, instead. Said evil sorcerer has his own problems – to the extent that he’s frankly forgotten about the first born he’s supposed to have claimed.

In addition to the two main protagonists, there is a vibrant cast of supporting characters. Special mention has to go to a grumpy cat, who stole the show for me several times and we also have the big, bad villain. Initially, I wondered if we’d get the two-dimensional, cardboard cutout variety – but Lancaster also gave us an insight into why he’s so determined to bind Mal to his will.

There’s a lot of humour alongside the difficulty caused by the magic and the slow-burn romance works well. There are a couple of spicy sex scenes, which are sufficiently well handled that I didn’t have a problem with them – and these days, my tolerance of graphic bedroom scenes in amongst my fantasy adventures is running thin. All in all, this is a delightful tale and one of the best fairytale retellings I’ve read this year. Very highly recommended for fans of this sub-genre. While I obtained an arc of How to Find a Nameless Fae from the author via Netgalley, the opinions I have expressed are unbiased and my own.
10/10

This was a cute story. I really enjoyed an older heroine. Malediction and Gisele were great together. The story seemed a little long and a lot of push and pull that I'm not sure was completely necessary

In How to Find a Nameless Fae by A.J. Lancaster, Gisele is cursed. Her mother sacrificed her to a fae as part of a firstborn bargain to allow her to spin straw into gold. However, Gisele is now 40 years old and still has not been claimed by her captor. As her curse worsens, she decides to take matters into her own hands and track down her captor in the world of the Fae. However, when she tracks him down, she realizes that things are not at all what they seem. Can she track down his name before the mysterious enemy tracks them down and locks in her curse forever?

I thought that this book was so whimsical and magical. It truly felt like reading an adult fairytale. I enjoyed the sentient house and all of the things that it helped our characters to do. I also enjoyed Zingiber the cat, who brought a touch of relief in tense moments. The other fae and creatures were a nice touch as well, mostly because it meant that Gisele finally felt like she had friends after 40 years of scaring people away. The ending was very well done and I felt that it wrapped up all of the elements of the story really nicely.

I personally wish that the story had been more descriptive in terms of plot. It felt very character-focused, which isn’t a bad thing. I love a character-driven story. But when you have a book with a heavy plot like this one, there has to be a balance, and I thought that it could have been balanced better. I also thought that the story felt somewhat juvenile in parts. Again, I understand this because Gisele has been mostly on her own for 40 years and doesn’t really understand a lot of social norms or world norms. However, at times, it felt like both she and “Mal” were making decisions or speaking as if they were 17 years old instead of 40 and older. Finally, it was a touch long. I think the author could have achieved the same results in fewer pages.

I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a whimsical fairytale story to get lost in, and I did enjoy it. If there is another in the series, I would definitely read it! 3.5 Stars.

I had not read a "romantasy" until this book, but I had read and loved loads of historical romances. This book was the right mix and added some unconventional features, like a heroine princess in her 40s who decides she might just as well save herself from the tower before growing grey hair there. I thouroughly enjoyed every banter between the two main characters and will surely check out other books by this author.

The first “cozy” fantasy that I have actually enjoyed. I loved that it had a charming found family element and was exuberantly queer. The magic and world building was eloquently described. I also enjoyed the 40+ female perspective. Funny dialogue and the main characters had great chemistry.

I received an ARC of How to Find a Nameless Fae by A.J. Lancaster (netgalley) in exchange for an honest review.

This is a charming fae fantasy with a cozy fairytale vibe and witty dialogue. Gisele is a strong, pragmatic heroine, and the nameless lord is the perfect mysterious counterpart. Their reluctant alliance and evolving dynamic—with an almost fake-enemies vibe—held my interest throughout.

That said, I had a couple of issues. The romance felt like a semi-slow burn, but since Gisele is upfront about her attraction from the start, the early tension didn’t build as naturally as I would have liked. The real push-and-pull dynamic only kicked in later, when their personalities and conflicts began to clash more.

I also found some of the inner thoughts repetitive, which slowed the pacing in parts. Additionally, Gisele’s voice felt younger than her stated age, which made it harder to fully connect with her perspective.

Despite these points, the magical debt plot added real stakes, and the gradual shift from resentment to understanding between the leads was satisfying.

Perfect for readers who enjoy reluctant alliances, magical bargains, and slow-burn tension. How to Find a Nameless Fae feels like both a whimsical fae adventure and an exploration of how duty and resentment can slowly unravel into something more intimate.

A cozy fantasy with a few flaws (personally), but still 100 % worth the read.

Thank you to the publisher for providing me with an eARC of this book via NetGally in exchange for an honest review!

We follow our main MFC princess Gisele. Before she was borne, her mother made a first bourne bargain with a sorcerer. Her mother failed to do her part of the bargain and Gisele was cursed. She is now 40 years old and has been prepared to get taken away, and she has been treated differently her whole life because of the curse. She decides to take matters into her own hands and look for the sorcerer that cursed her.

This book definitely read as a cozy fantasy. It is a rumpelstilstkin retelling with enemies to lovers.
It was a place between slow and medium in pacing an it could feel a little to slow sometimes for my taste. Sometimes I was drifting out of the story while reading because it was a little slow and repetitive at times. The romance in was okay and cute but nothing new and special. It did not quite feel the chemistry between the main characters trough the book.

How to Find a Nameless Fae is an adorable mashup of Rumplestiltskin & Howl’s Moving Castle. I really enjoyed reading an older female MC take charge of her life and barriers.
I was giggling and kicking my feet reading the banter.
4.5/5
Thank you to Net Galley & Victory Editing for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 rounded up. AJ Lancaster builds beautiful worlds and in this case beautiful houses as well. I've had a run of books lately with magical houses and I can confirm I would like to live in one!

Gisele leaves the confines of her home and her world to figure out how to end the curse that was put on her at birth. She's off to find the fae who cursed her so she can get on with living around people without them being uncomfortable in her presence or without mucking around with the properties of gold. Gisele finds her Malediction, who is not at all what she expected, and his sentient house. Together they work to figure out how to get Gisele out of the curse.

There was a lot to like about this book, older characters (wohoo for a 40 year old FMC!), found friendship with all sorts of fae characters & a cat, a solid retelling Rumpelstiltskin where you root for him, characters you want to like and a story that doesn't let you down by pulling the rug out from under you, it has light and humor.

In the acknowledgements it's mentioned that <spoiler> this was initially a novella, and I feel like the reader can tell. </spoiler> It doesn't have the quick wit the Stariel series has, and in my opinion it doesn't maximize the use of the page count.

I adored Stariel and this was a fine follow up, I think I just had greater expectations. Keep 'em coming AJ! I'll still be reading.

What do you get when a knife-wielding princess with a fae-debt problem crashes into a reclusive magical house lord who literally has no name? Chaos, charm, and a slow-burn bond tied up in fairy-gold threads. 🧚‍♂️

Gisele was promised to a fae sorcerer before she was even born, and now that he’s ghosted her (rude), the magical debt is starting to unravel her life. So naturally, she sets off to hunt him down with sass, steel, and zero patience. But instead of a terrifying villain, she finds a reluctant, nameless lord who’s just as trapped as she is.

✨ Enchanted house? Check.
✨ Magical bickering? Check.
✨ A quest to unravel true names, true selves, and old curses? YES PLEASE.

Think tangled fairytales meets cozy gothic vibes, with a heroine who’s fed up and feral in the best way. If you love magical bargains, unlikely partnerships, and a bit of chaos with your destiny this one’s for you.

🧵 Would you dare try to guess a fae’s true name?

#FantasyReads #CozyFantasy #HowToFindANamelessFae #FairyTaleRetelling #EnemiesToLovers #BookReview #BookstagramMagic

I got this as an arc on Netgalley and it has since come out. This was fun and I should have figured out his name WAY EARLIER. My fault for reading when having PEM. I especially adored the main side characters.

This book is exactly what I needed: a cozy romantasy with charm, wit, and a slow burn that doesn’t make me want to throw things. Just enough tension to keep me invested, but none of the toxic drama that usually makes me feral.

The heroine is everything I want in a fantasy MC: sensible, sarcastic, and entirely over everyone’s drama. She’s been dealt a curse and a royal title, but neither defines her. She’s calm under pressure, emotionally intelligent, and just sharp enough to make every scene feel alive. She doesn’t flail; she handles things. And she’s funny - not quirky, not forced - just naturally dry and done.

And then there’s the catboy.

He has trauma, yes, but mostly he’s a gentle, self-sacrificing mess of a man who tries really hard to pretend he’s fine. Sometimes a little smug, because he knows he’s cute and fair enough, he is. His ears betray his feelings constantly. He’s not the aloof, broody fae lord; he’s the anxious catboy who wants to be helpful and quietly spirals when feelings happen. I adore him.

The romance is a proper slow burn. There’s yearning, there’s banter, and there’s very little miscommunication, which honestly feels revolutionary. When they finally get together (once, and only once), it’s cute, meaningful, and timed to absolute emotional perfection.

This book felt like emotional comfort food: warm, a little sad, full of heart, and laced with cleverness. Nothing overdone - just cozy fantasy done really well.