I am used to reading bad books. I try very hard not to, I pick every one very carefully, but I often end up with something I’d been doing my best to avoid. And it’s okay. It’s the same for all of us. But when a book starts out great and I get my hopes up, only to become formulaic and focused on all the wrong things later on, I feel more than just disappointed. I feel cheated.

Touched had a very promising beginning. Ever since he was born, Nick Cross’ head has been filled with what he calls memories, but what are really visions of his future. His best hope is to pick a future he likes and stick to the script, but any deviation, no matter how little, can change everything, and when it does, it’s usually for the worse. If he ignores the script he’s currently following or makes a mistake, his head is instantly filled with so many possible futures that he is unable to function until he chooses a new one and gets back on course. Because he’s always trying to follow some script (or ignore it if he doesn’t like the future it leads to), it’s very hard for him to pretend that he’s normal.

I felt like I’d gone ten rounds of a heavyweight title match. I couldn’t tell if it was because of the cycling or because the new memories would prove too horrifying to bear. I could change them. I could change the bad things, sometimes, by going off script. The problem was, changing the bad things usually took away the good things, too. And there always seemed to be more bad things to replace the ones I managed to escape.

Nick has lived several versions of a normal life through ‘memories’ of his future. He has seen a wife he adored, children and grandchildren, jobs, houses and everything else he could have if he would just stay on the right script. Sometimes his ‘memories’ are so real that he is unable to separate them from reality, which causes him to mention his wife or an event that never actually happened to other people. But when a beautiful, angelic-looking girl Taryn enters his life and causes him to change course, every single future that lies ahead becomes downright disastrous.

The future I’d given up was a one- in- a- thousand future. I went to college, married Sue, who understood me as well as anyone could, had children and grandchildren. It wasn’t anything awesome, but it was normal, and that was all I wanted.

Sounds pretty great, right? It was for a while, but as soon as a girl entered the picture, it all went downhill pretty fast. Touched was too focused on romance end not nearly enough on Nick’s very interesting ability. Perhaps the book should have been written from his girlfriend Taryn’s point of view considering that the second half revolved almost entirely around her… which leads me to my next problem, Nick’s voice.

We’ve had many examples of female authors successfully writing male protagonists. Just think of Holly Black and Cassel, Lish McBride and Sam or even Kendare Blake and Cass, but I’m sorry to say that we cannot count Cyn Balog and Nick among them. For the most part, Nick had the voice of a thirteen-year-old girl, maybe even younger, one still not old enough to be completely ruled by hormones. A lot could be written off as lack of experience since he spent his entire life focusing too much on the future and not enough on the present, but I doubt even inexperienced seventeen-year-old boys think and behave like whiny little girls. There was something missing in his character that I can’t quite put my finger on, but he never came alive for me and I didn’t care about what happens to him at all.

Cyn Balog’s prose is not very immersive. I was never really invested in her story, I never felt like I was part of it. It was more like watching something happen from a great distance, something that is of little concern to you. I knew exactly when Balog was aiming for my emotions, but she never quite reached me, never even came close.

If you’re in the mood for a YA paranormal story that has ‘wasted potential’ written all over it, I’d say go for it. If not, find something else to read.

Also posted at The Nocturnal Library