Review: Touch by Jus Accardo (Denazen #1)

Publisher - Entangled Publishing
Publication Date  - November 2011
Pages - 262 pages
Genre - YA Paranromal Romance

Source - Received from publisher for review

Rating - 3 out of 5: I liked it.

Book Info - 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.

My Thoughts - I was very excited to be offered a copy of Touch for review after reading a lot of 5 star reviews around the blogosphere. However, I think I may have started reading this book with my expectations raised too high as, for me, it didn't completely live up to the hype. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of very good things about this book, but there were also a few things that I really didn't like all that much.

But I always like to start off by saying something positive so I'll start with the things that I did like. The premise of the book was really, really good. The idea of a secret corporation that imprisons teens with special powers and uses them as assassins was amazing - I've never read anything like it before. Dez's father - the head of the corporation - was just completely evil and the type of character that you love to hate. And there is more than enough action in Touch to keep you on the edge of your seat throughout the entire book.

I really loved Kale as a character. What really endeared me to him is his innocence of the 'real world'. He had been held captive by Denazen since he was born and he doesn't really have a clue about how things work outside of those four walls he has been raised in. I loved watching him learn about what a vase is used for and how a DVD works, and most importantly about what it is like to fall in love. And my heart broke for him when he finds out that in the real world people aren't punished with death when they do something bad as he had always been led to believe. It's at this point he realises that what he has been doing for Denazen is completely wrong and he starts to think of himself as a bad person, when really he has just been used by the corporation.

Where I fell in love with Kale, I have to admit that the same did not happen with Kez. I did enjoy some of her snarky humour but as a person I didn't like her at all. She comes across as very shallow and pretty vain. She spends a lot of time admiring the way she looks and telling the reader about how all the boys find her attractive. I just wasn't interested in hearing about that all the way through the novel.

Also, I didn't understand Dez's actions a lot of the time. For example, after her father comes home to find her with Kale, Kale threatens to kill Dez if he is not allowed to leave, and then he touches her. On purpose! This should have killed her and was a definite murder attempt on the part of Kale, but she still leaves the house with him instead of staying with her father. It isn't until later that she finds out that his touch can actually kill people but she still stays with him despite the fact that he had tried to kill her. In my opinion, the reasons she gave for staying with him just weren't strong enough to take that big a risk. (Hmm, just read that paragraph back and realised that this scenario should probably make me hate Kale too but it doesn't. I think this is because he didn't know any better. It is what he has been trained to do his entire life and he was desperate not to have to go back to Denazen so he used the only tactic he has ever known.)

Summary - An action-packed novel with a very unique premise which had me on the edge of my seat. However, disliking Dez as much as I did meant that I didn't enjoy the novel as much as I felt I could have. But there is a big cliff-hanger at the end and I am interested in reading what life has in store for Kale in book two (even if I'm not particularly interested in Dez's story!).

Other reviews of this book:
Demons Read Too / Fictitious Delicious / Reading Angel / Smexy Books
(If you would like your review of Touch included here, please leave a link to your review in the comments and I will be sure to add it)