Review - Touched by: Corrine Jackson

Title: Touched
Author: Corrine Jackson
Publisher: Kensington Teen
Pages: 343
Format: Paperback
Series: Sense Thieves 

Description:

Remy O’Malley heals people with touch—but every injury she cures becomes her own. Living in a household with an abusive stepfather, she has healed untold numbers of broken bones, burns,and bruises. And then one night her stepfather goes too far.

Being sent to live with her estranged father offers a clean start and she is eager to take it. Enter Asher Blackwell. Once a Protector of Healers, Asher sacrificed his senses to become immortal. Only by killing a Healer can a Protector recover their human senses. Falling in love is against the rules between these two enemies. Because Remy has the power to make Protectors human again, and when they find out, they’ll be coming for her—if Asher doesn’t kill her first.

This is Book One in the Touched trilogy.

My thoughts: 

Can you imagine not being able to feel anything at all when you touch someone you love or to smell the flowers when springs arrives, not inhaling the smell of cookies when you enter a pastry, not tasting the food you eat because you can't smell it?.. This is how Ashton Blackwell's life has been. Until he meets Remy, that is.

Remy has grown up with her mother and stepfather. Her power to heal has proved useful in this setting since she has to, on many occations, heal her mother's and her own wounds because the stepfather is an abusive man. Of course, her ability has a consequence: she acquires the wounds/sickness she heals. When she moves in with her own father and his family, what she is, her power, gets a name: Remy is a Healer. And the Blackwell family are all Protectors. Back in the day, Protectors were working with Healers and protecting them, as their name entails. But then they weren't getting along no more...

Even though they're enemies now, the attraction between them leads to sparks, LITERALLY. While you see them connect and fall in love, you also get a glimpse of Healer vs. Protector history, find out why they're enemies now and why Remy is the key to solving it all. 

Some parts of the book reminded me a lot of the Twilight series, some of Hush, Hush and some Daughter of Smoke and Bone. However, with its unique subject matter despite all its similarities to books I just mentioned, I found myself thinking about what it would be like to not feel the physical touch. We will eventually see if Protectors ever get their basic feelings back.