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Touchpoints
Charlotte was a thriving Silicon Valley entrepreneur until a series of tragic events knocked her off her mental game. She heads to Prince Edward Island for the summer, with a plan to reboot her career and her sex life.
She hooks up with a local; the sex is incredible and she’s insatiable. He falls hard, and realizes he’s going to need all his skills and savvy to keep the dynamic Charlotte in his life.
Unrequited love, expectations from family and community, and the demands of tech startup life create challenges, and Charlotte needs to head back to Silicon Valley…
Available on Amazon, paperback or Kindle.
She hooks up with a local; the sex is incredible and she’s insatiable. He falls hard, and realizes he’s going to need all his skills and savvy to keep the dynamic Charlotte in his life.
Unrequited love, expectations from family and community, and the demands of tech startup life create challenges, and Charlotte needs to head back to Silicon Valley…
Available on Amazon, paperback or Kindle.
- GenresContemporaryRomance
359 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 1, 2022
5 people are currently reading
43 people want to read
About the author
Brienne Loughlin
1 book4 followersBrienne Loughlin is an American romance novelist who writes from a feminist perspective.
She began writing in earnest when she couldn’t find a steamy romance novel where the female character wasn’t a virgin, manipulated by her boss/bodyguard/wolfpack leader, or submissive to her boyfriend/brother’s friend/mafia leader.
Brienne is the founder of the Feminist Spice Club, a new community and movement to encourage romance writers to avoid biased tropes and bring out the strength and confidence of their female main characters.
Based in Silicon Valley, she works in tech and contributes to diversity and inclusion initiatives. Brienne loves coffee, Labrador retrievers, and men who do laundry (not necessarily in that order.)
She began writing in earnest when she couldn’t find a steamy romance novel where the female character wasn’t a virgin, manipulated by her boss/bodyguard/wolfpack leader, or submissive to her boyfriend/brother’s friend/mafia leader.
Brienne is the founder of the Feminist Spice Club, a new community and movement to encourage romance writers to avoid biased tropes and bring out the strength and confidence of their female main characters.
Based in Silicon Valley, she works in tech and contributes to diversity and inclusion initiatives. Brienne loves coffee, Labrador retrievers, and men who do laundry (not necessarily in that order.)
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 9, 2023
I so love Charlotte. She’s feisty and super confident, brash and brilliant.
Who couldn’t use a Michael in their life, right? He’s so beautiful. And who’s going to pass up someone so attentive to their pleasure? Not me!
I really wanted to see what happened when they went to Cali. For a Michael to see the other side of Charlotte.
I surprisingly enjoyed the ‘happy for now’ ending. It went with Charlotte’s character to not settle for a HEA when she wasn’t ready.
Jack is a blast.
This is a great, feminine focused spicy read. Charlotte and Michael work as a couple wonderfully.
I received a copy from the author. All opinions are my own.
Who couldn’t use a Michael in their life, right? He’s so beautiful. And who’s going to pass up someone so attentive to their pleasure? Not me!
I really wanted to see what happened when they went to Cali. For a Michael to see the other side of Charlotte.
I surprisingly enjoyed the ‘happy for now’ ending. It went with Charlotte’s character to not settle for a HEA when she wasn’t ready.
Jack is a blast.
This is a great, feminine focused spicy read. Charlotte and Michael work as a couple wonderfully.
I received a copy from the author. All opinions are my own.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 30, 2022
I long for storylines where the female is the character who is smart, experienced (sexually and with life), influential, and doesn’t need rescuing. I was pleasantly surprised to be introduced to Touchpoints. I love how she has sex (lots of it) without shame, with supporting characters and storyline not feeding into the stereotype of woman needing to be a virgin and only having sex for procreation and not pleasure. I think Charlotte is a great character in the way she normalizes her power, intelligence, age, and confidence. The storyline doesn’t marginalize her for being all those things either. If I were to be picky, I would say her character development was a little slower then I was hoping. This could have been intentional since she was recovering from her grief, but I think she has great emotional intelligence. I think she is a great example of how you can be powerful and warm to others compared to the hard and cold persona that comes with the typical male roles.
I loved how a big component of women’s health, sex, is front and center throughout her journey. The ending couldn’t have been any better! It was completely different from the typical narrative of the American storyline of “happy ever after” and truer to real life. I am looking forward to reading more of Brienne Loughlin's books.
I loved how a big component of women’s health, sex, is front and center throughout her journey. The ending couldn’t have been any better! It was completely different from the typical narrative of the American storyline of “happy ever after” and truer to real life. I am looking forward to reading more of Brienne Loughlin's books.
September 3, 2022
I N D E P E N D E N T
A next level independent woman who wanted to say yes but her past told her no. Michael learned he could modify his life for love and it not be reciprocated.
However, the steamy sex between Charlotte and Michael is off the charts. Then you throw into the mix a jealous brother. I'm going, to be honest, Philippe is a smarmy character which makes him a good antagonist to Michael in a familial sense, and Charlotte in a professional manner.
I'm disappointed each chapter built to an anticlimactic ending unless another book is in the works.
A next level independent woman who wanted to say yes but her past told her no. Michael learned he could modify his life for love and it not be reciprocated.
However, the steamy sex between Charlotte and Michael is off the charts. Then you throw into the mix a jealous brother. I'm going, to be honest, Philippe is a smarmy character which makes him a good antagonist to Michael in a familial sense, and Charlotte in a professional manner.
I'm disappointed each chapter built to an anticlimactic ending unless another book is in the works.
July 10, 2022
Charlotte and Michael's story is not a typical one. They're both mature characters (older than 30, and mature in the way they behave) and they bring their own lifetimes of experience, connections, goals and heartaches to the new and unexpected connection they have. Charlotte is looking for an escape and a good time. She definitely finds that in Michael, but there's more there too.
I loved the glimpses we got of Charlotte's working life, making it clear what a capable, intelligent businesswoman she is. It's easy to see why Michael falls for her, and his appeal is pretty easy to see too (and not just what he can do with his hands ;).
The ending took me by surprise but it feels true to the characters, who by the end of the book seemed very real to me. A really enjoyable read!
I loved the glimpses we got of Charlotte's working life, making it clear what a capable, intelligent businesswoman she is. It's easy to see why Michael falls for her, and his appeal is pretty easy to see too (and not just what he can do with his hands ;).
The ending took me by surprise but it feels true to the characters, who by the end of the book seemed very real to me. A really enjoyable read!
August 6, 2022
Charlotte McMillan is the kind of woman any guy would love to meet - smart, beautiful, wealthy, and not especially needy. At the same time she’s not emotionally available to Michael Quinn who falls for her. Some of the conventional tropes of romance fiction are changed around in Brienne Loughlin’s story of a woman who’s successful in the tech industry and who, after experiencing personal tragedy, decides to reset on Prince Edward Island. She seeks out a man she met briefly there four years ago. Early in the story, Charlotte and Michael connect easily and have instant chemistry and great sex. So what happens in the next 44 chapters? Basically more of the same. Which makes for fun reading, I have to say, though not so much suspense, drama or surprise.
The sex scenes are especially artfully done and they’re the glue of the connection between Michael and Charlotte. All of the sex is positive and rejuvenating for Charlotte, rewarding for Michael. The characters are both hot, and their connection makes everyone else on the island envious. Because of the centrality of sex in the story alone, and Loughlin’s evocative descriptions of it, I’ll be looking for her next book. The writing is very consumable, it’s scene intensive and light on backstory, but atmospheric enough to give a taste of locale.
If I have a quibble it’s with the story structure. Touchpoints nicely shows how the stories of confident, independent women don’t fit easily within the formulas of genre fiction. To the extent this is a romance it’s Michael’s story. He’s the one who falls in love early in the book and seeks to win the affection of Charlotte. Michael is the one who has the greater emotional struggle, has the goal of a long-term relationship and seeks to resolve various challenges to realizing it. Certain complications to that end are revealed, primarily the fact that Charlotte isn’t looking for a relationship so much as a fling.
Charlotte’s business interests and success in work are her primary life goals and are illustrated at least as convincingly as is her interest in Michael. The title plays on both Charlotte’s acumen about business communications and also her physical responsiveness to Michael.
Charlotte’s relationship story is more about the episodic satisfaction she gets from having sex with Michael. That makes for delicious scenes though doesn’t truly require a book-length narrative. We’ve learned more about her past by the time the book concludes, but do not see that she has traveled far from the early chapters.
It may be that the book can’t make up its mind about who Charlotte is. Is she being true to herself? The fact that Charlotte’s kept Michael in her thoughts for four years before seeking him out, but even now doesn’t want an emotional connection with him, seems slightly suspect.
Or what is more likely, she’s looking for a new kind of relationship model – “exclusive but not committed” is how the couple describes it near the conclusion. In focusing on the nature of Charlotte’s sexual needs as the basis for connection and foregoing a more traditional romance plot, Loughlin opens the door to exploring stories about the centrality of sex in women’s lives and considering new forms of relationships that could accommodate that. It’s this latter issue I think could have been explored more in the interactions of the characters here. Michael struggles at length to get Charlotte to have a serious conversation with him. By the end they’re headed for something different from a generic romance ending, but I found myself wanting to hear more about it from Charlotte. If she could talk about relationship styles as easily as she does about technology startups she’d be defining a new kind of story for us.
The sex scenes are especially artfully done and they’re the glue of the connection between Michael and Charlotte. All of the sex is positive and rejuvenating for Charlotte, rewarding for Michael. The characters are both hot, and their connection makes everyone else on the island envious. Because of the centrality of sex in the story alone, and Loughlin’s evocative descriptions of it, I’ll be looking for her next book. The writing is very consumable, it’s scene intensive and light on backstory, but atmospheric enough to give a taste of locale.
If I have a quibble it’s with the story structure. Touchpoints nicely shows how the stories of confident, independent women don’t fit easily within the formulas of genre fiction. To the extent this is a romance it’s Michael’s story. He’s the one who falls in love early in the book and seeks to win the affection of Charlotte. Michael is the one who has the greater emotional struggle, has the goal of a long-term relationship and seeks to resolve various challenges to realizing it. Certain complications to that end are revealed, primarily the fact that Charlotte isn’t looking for a relationship so much as a fling.
Charlotte’s business interests and success in work are her primary life goals and are illustrated at least as convincingly as is her interest in Michael. The title plays on both Charlotte’s acumen about business communications and also her physical responsiveness to Michael.
Charlotte’s relationship story is more about the episodic satisfaction she gets from having sex with Michael. That makes for delicious scenes though doesn’t truly require a book-length narrative. We’ve learned more about her past by the time the book concludes, but do not see that she has traveled far from the early chapters.
It may be that the book can’t make up its mind about who Charlotte is. Is she being true to herself? The fact that Charlotte’s kept Michael in her thoughts for four years before seeking him out, but even now doesn’t want an emotional connection with him, seems slightly suspect.
Or what is more likely, she’s looking for a new kind of relationship model – “exclusive but not committed” is how the couple describes it near the conclusion. In focusing on the nature of Charlotte’s sexual needs as the basis for connection and foregoing a more traditional romance plot, Loughlin opens the door to exploring stories about the centrality of sex in women’s lives and considering new forms of relationships that could accommodate that. It’s this latter issue I think could have been explored more in the interactions of the characters here. Michael struggles at length to get Charlotte to have a serious conversation with him. By the end they’re headed for something different from a generic romance ending, but I found myself wanting to hear more about it from Charlotte. If she could talk about relationship styles as easily as she does about technology startups she’d be defining a new kind of story for us.
November 24, 2022
Charlotte & Michael’s story held promise: I really wanted to like it particularly because in the foreward the author states that it’s a feminist-driven narrative, and I was here for it. However, Charlotte is a very challenging character to connect with, to be reductive, some might consider her unlikeable. This is something which other authors such as JR Ward, Megan Montgomery & Olivia Dade have written masterfully, and leave you rooting for and understanding the characters. I completely get Charlotte’s prickliness re. her trauma, but somehow this author is doing her a disservice by not plumbing her depths beyond her privileged recipient of generational wealth turned Ivy League-educated tech multimillionaire who's having a sexual reawakening. Instead Charlotte acts incongruously with an independent, self-possessed woman, especially when in a fit of jealousy she publicly lays claim to Michael then treats him like her personal sex toy, but gets her back up when he tries to leave shortly after they shag.
And let’s talk about the love scenes, shall we? It’s awkward: the sex is fraught with elaborate whys and hows and light on sensuality. Michael explains what just happened to Charlotte after pleasuring her at almost every encounter, and she’s 43 years old FFS!! I understand this was done in service to being informative, but there’s no heat. It’s more of a tutorial, and a not very sexy one at that.
This was DNF for me at the 40-ish percentage mark.
And let’s talk about the love scenes, shall we? It’s awkward: the sex is fraught with elaborate whys and hows and light on sensuality. Michael explains what just happened to Charlotte after pleasuring her at almost every encounter, and she’s 43 years old FFS!! I understand this was done in service to being informative, but there’s no heat. It’s more of a tutorial, and a not very sexy one at that.
This was DNF for me at the 40-ish percentage mark.
June 30, 2022
Touchpoints is a lovely well-written book about trauma, independence, growing relationships, and sex. Charlotte is a confident but emotionally closed off Silicon Valley star and spends a summer on PEI where her family hails from to reset from recent traumas in her life. Michael is a local big name in business, entertainment, and by his family’s roots on the island. Together they navigate a summer with a seemingly no-strings relationship while running their own lives and businesses.
It’s a refreshingly realistic, feminist, sex-positive view on adult relationships without all the belittling female representation that is so often found in the romance genre but is a book with slightly more sex than plot, not that that is a bad thing. This book could seriously serve as an instruction manual on how to produce a female O every time with how detailed, frequent, and varied their sexual encounters are. It doesn’t read like a debut novel at all, the writing is engaging and well edited. The characters are enjoyable and relatable and even the side characters have interesting character development throughout the story. I was honestly blindsided by the abrupt end and am very much hoping there’s a sequel in the works because Michael and Charlotte’s story is definitely unfinished here.
It’s a refreshingly realistic, feminist, sex-positive view on adult relationships without all the belittling female representation that is so often found in the romance genre but is a book with slightly more sex than plot, not that that is a bad thing. This book could seriously serve as an instruction manual on how to produce a female O every time with how detailed, frequent, and varied their sexual encounters are. It doesn’t read like a debut novel at all, the writing is engaging and well edited. The characters are enjoyable and relatable and even the side characters have interesting character development throughout the story. I was honestly blindsided by the abrupt end and am very much hoping there’s a sequel in the works because Michael and Charlotte’s story is definitely unfinished here.
May 1, 2022
Full disclosure: I'm the author. But I was re-re-re-re-reading Touchpoints, and I was totally in the flow, as if reading it for the first time. These characters exist outside of my mind in their own virtual world. The steamy scenes still make me steamy.
Research shows that "high percentages of women report feeling sexually empowered by reading erotica. In fact, there are lots of erotic books that can be quite sexy and sexual without demeaning women and can even empower women. You need to look for books with a central female character who is both sexually active and in charge of her own life and desires." (full article here: https://www.womanandhome.com/us/healt...)
That's exactly what Touchpoints offers, and that's why it has been designated A FEMINIST SPICE CLUB tm Read.
I hope you enjoy it!
Research shows that "high percentages of women report feeling sexually empowered by reading erotica. In fact, there are lots of erotic books that can be quite sexy and sexual without demeaning women and can even empower women. You need to look for books with a central female character who is both sexually active and in charge of her own life and desires." (full article here: https://www.womanandhome.com/us/healt...)
That's exactly what Touchpoints offers, and that's why it has been designated A FEMINIST SPICE CLUB tm Read.
I hope you enjoy it!
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews