Touch by Natalia Jaster Pages: 237
Published by Createspace Independent Pub on October 27, 2014
Genres: Young Adult, Romance, mythology
Source: ecopy from Author
The myth of Eros isn’t the truth. Her story is the truth . . .
Love is an immortal bad girl. With a strike of her arrow and a smirk on her face, she pins human hearts together against their will. It’s for their own good, of course—silly, clueless creatures that they are.
But Love has never loved. Not until the Fates parcel her off to a small, frostbitten town littered with needy souls. Not until she crosses paths with Andrew, a boy whose gaze locks onto hers. Yet how can this be? Mortals don’t have the power to see deities.The longer they’re friends, the more Love wishes she could touch Andrew. In gentle ways. In other tempting and reckless ways as well.
It’s impossible. She isn’t a true part of his world. She’s an outsider whose fingers will only ever sweep through him. A mischievous, invisible goddess who’s destined to be alone. And he’s destined for someone else. By order of the Fates, it’s Love’s duty to betray his trust. To seal his heart while ignoring the gash in her own.
Or she could become human. For there is one very tricky, very dangerous way to do so.If only Andrew felt the same about her, it might be worth the risk.
Touch by Natalia Jaster is a standalone young adult novel which features a different take on Eros. In touch, Eros is a girl and is a class of goddesses called the archers. Here all of the emotions have a representative god or goddess and they all wield arrows to help maintain the balance of their emotion in the world. In Touch, Eros is sent to balance out the love in a small town. I liked the idea that other gods and goddesses also used arrows to maintain order, and the arrows themselves were more complicated than I have seen in other stories. It added an interesting element to the story of cupid.
Love is such a lonely girl. (or I should say Goddess) she is unable to touch any human, and she longs for that kind of contact and companionship more than anything. I loved, loved loved that the human that grabs her attention is one that is so overlooked by his peers. He has a leg injury and is often the the prime target for bullies, but he has a heart of gold and he doesn’t put up with any of Love’s annoyingly superior tendencies. (Don’t get me wrong- she is nice, but she is also vain. I mean, come on- she is the goddess of love.) Watching Love and Andrew, it was impossible not to root for them. Although there was just something about Anger that almost made me wish it would turn out a different way! (it was never really explored in the story, so it was mostly just my wishful thinking)
Though there were a few aspects of the story that I found a little hinky- the author did explain them, so I can’t really fault anyone for it, they just didn’t sit 100% with me. Like the fact that Love was essentially living in this one small town in the middle of nowhere matching people. But she is the only love goddess, so what about the billions of other people. The gods and goddesses rotate their location, but it seemed weird to me for them to stay in any one location for such an extended period of time. (like I said, it was explained in the story as to why. Author Natalia Jaster left no stone unturned with explanations of the arrows, gods and goddesses and their whole world.)
Bottom Line- if you are a fanatic about mythology books like I am, you will enjoy this different take on a cupid tale. I really enjoyed it, and the love story and character growth is really great. An all around fun read.
Side note: I would love to see Anger’s story!
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