Touch

by Claire North

"He tried to take my life. Instead I took his. It was a long time ago. I remember it was dark, and I didn't see my killer until it was too late. As I died, my hand touched his. That's when the first switch took place. Suddenly, I was looking through the eyes of my killer, and I was watching myself die. Now switching is easy. I can jump from body to body, have any life, be anyone. Some people touch lives. Others take them. I do both"--Jacket.

• ISBN10: 0316335916
• ISBN13: 9780316335911
• Publish Date: 4 August 2015 (first published 1 January 2015)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Little, Brown & Company
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 448
• Language: English

Reviews

[Bianca]

“Tell me – do you feel like you’re losing time?”

He didn’t answer.

“Sure you do. Everyone does. At two o’clock you sit down to read a book and then, what do you know, it’s five in the afternoon and you’re only two pages further in. Perhaps, as you walk home through familiar streets, you grow distracted, and when next you wrench your concentration back to where you’re going you find you’re already there but the hour is late – so much later than you think. A call logged on your phone you don’t remember making; perhaps your pocket dialled it as you leaned against the table. A waiting room where the magazines are three years old and you can’t be bothered but, oh my! The time has flown and you don’t quite know why. All we need are a few seconds. To give my wallet to a woman I do not know. To kiss a stranger, make a telephone call, spit in the face of the man I love, punch a policeman, push a traveller in front of a train. To give an order in a voice known for its authority. I can change your life in less than ten seconds. And when it’s done, all you will be able to say as you stand before a jury of your peers is… you don’t know what came over you. So tell me. Have you been losing time?”

— Another brilliant book by [a:Claire North|7210024|Claire North|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1440105009p2/7210024.jpg]! They should turn her books into movies! Her books are excruciatingly slow-paced but really really good and clever! I am in love.

[wyvernfriend]

What if when you die you keep going, you inhabit other people's bodies with a touch. What if you're not the only one. What if some of you abused the privilege. What if one of the abusers decides to help the people who want to eliminate this and all you want to do is keep living.

This is told from the perspective of one of these ghosts. A person who spends their live moving from person to person, exploring different lives and different bodies and trying to live as much as possible before moving on, often conscious of how they're depriving people of living their own lives, and also aware that many people are on cruise control through chunks of their lives and this can be used as a path for a ghost.

Kepler, as our ghost is known, has lived many lives, been in many bodies and barely remembers their own when they died of violence, but now they have to survive and it's a tough job.

This was interesting and I really recommend it.

[adamfortuna]

If you saw the movie Fallen, the premise of touch may be familiar -- a special being that can transfer to another body and effectively "take control" of it. Where this story differs from the thriller, is that it focuses on many people with this ability and how they cope and adapt. I loved how this story went into the real world implications of this concept. How could you grow old in someone elses body, denying them life? If you have no conscience that's one thing, but for good people this ability sounds more like a curse.

Where it fell short for me was a connection with the characters. With Claire Norths other book,The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, I was constantly worrying about what would happen, and feeling for the characters. In this one I didn't have the same connection. An interesting topic, and well explored but the connection with the characters left me feeling like something was missing.