Release Date: Nov. 1, 2011
Publisher: Entangled Publishing
Pages: 251 pages
Genre: Paranormal
Source: Publisher
Goodreads Summary: When a strange boy tumbles down a river embankment and lands at her feet, seventeen-year-old adrenaline junkie Deznee Cross snatches the opportunity to piss off her father by bringing the mysterious hottie with ice blue eyes home.
Except there’s something off with Kale. He wears her shoes in the shower, is overly fascinated with things like DVDs and vases, and acts like she’ll turn to dust if he touches her. It’s not until Dez’s father shows up, wielding a gun and knowing more about Kale than he should, that Dez realizes there’s more to this boy—and her father’s “law firm”—than she realized.
Kale has been a prisoner of Denazen Corporation—an organization devoted to collecting “special” kids known as Sixes and using them as weapons—his entire life. And, oh yeah, his touch? It kills. The two team up with a group of rogue Sixes hellbent on taking down Denazen before they’re caught and her father discovers the biggest secret of all. A secret Dez has spent her life keeping safe.
A secret Kale will kill to protect.
Touch is a fast paced, action packed paranormal YA novel featuring characters with very cool powers similar to those seen in TV shows and movies like
X-Men and
Heroes. The story is set in a town where an unusual number of the citizens are Sixes, people who have special powers. The Denazen Corporation, an uber-evil company recruits the Sixes or more often than not, just kidnaps them and forces them to their bidding.
Touch is about Kale, the boy who escaped and
is hunted by Denazen and Deznee, the girl who helps him and brings him back to
life at the same time.
Seventeen-year-old Deznee Cross lives to upset her father. Deznee’s mom passed away when she was little and she and her father have a horrible relationship. He is an unloving workaholic who only pays attention to Dez when he scolds her to tell her how disappointed he is in her. While Dez thought her father was bad at first, she does not learn the extent of his evil until later in the novel. I get that Deznee hates him and does whatever she can to get back at him, but I still cringed when I read about her exploits.
Dez is an interesting character. It’s not that she isn’t likable, it’s just that I can’t identify with her. Dez describes herself as a former honor student, bookworm and all around good girl until she met her ex-boyfriend Alex. Between going out with Alex and her quest to make her dad mad, Deznee chooses to be a slacker, get bad grades, drink, party, do drugs and hook-up with lots of boys. It seems like everything Dez did was to upset her father and it felt like such a waste of energy. No one should live just to piss someone else off, no matter how much you hate them.
Kale is also very interesting. Accardo wrote his character with awesome contradictions: a trained assassin who has childlike innocence; a gorgeous, swoonworthy boy who has never kissed a girl, never even held another person’s hand. I liked Kale a lot and thought he was well written. The relationship with Dez is also fairly well developed.
While the plot of
Touch is very exciting, it does have its flaws. Everything comes together a too easily and quickly. For all its ruthlessness, the Denazen Corporation should have been more of a challenge. The story wrap-up felt a little too convenient and could have used a few more pages to expand the plot. I did love the constant action and the show of power by the Sixes was fun to read and my favorite part of the novel.
Touch is the first book in the series with the sequel,
Toxic scheduled to be released on May 1.
Content: Kissing, sexual situations, graphic sex, heavy profanity, violence, underage drinking and drug use. During the sex scene between two characters, the girl (who is sexually active) rationalizes that they don’t have to use a condom because she is on the pill and the boy is a virgin. This book is not appropriate for younger teens.
My Rating: Just Fine
