Amaya Books, $2.99
Paranormal Fiction, 2012
At the time of writing, A Touch of You is priced at $2.99 at Smashwords, but $0.99 at the usual online vendors that promote geographical restriction. And in this era of digital pulp fiction where every other author is throwing out her full-length books for $3.99 or so, the $2.99 price tag for this short thing feels excessively high. Clearly, the author wants to discourage heathens from countries not on the approved list from contributing to her sales, and thus, I humbly apologize for accidentally buying this book. It was an honest mistake, believe me.
Now, if I say that I won’t be accidentally buying more books in the Paranormal Crime Unit series, that would seem petty, but it’s true, and not because of the price point. No, it’s because A Touch of You is an unfortunate case of a prologue that actually discourages me from seeking out the subsequent books in this series.
First, the plot. We have a psychic, Micah, who funds himself in the dreams of a young boy, Henri, Henri dreams constantly of several variations of a tragedy: an accident that claims his parents’ lives. From this point, the two people who can connect on a psychic level begin to bond over several years, until Henri grows up and these two realize that there is an attraction between them.
The writing is serviceable and even engaging, but the problem here is that the story is too big to be forced into the short story format. This developing relationship between Micah and Henri is fast-forwarded over a period that spans decades, so it’s common to have the story jump between years from one scene to the next. The story is compressed to the point that I have only a superficial glimpse of what makes Henri and Micah tick.
As a prologue, therefore, A Touch of You does a pretty miserable job at engaging my interest to purchase and read the books that come after this. That’s a shame because there is an interesting premise here, and, if the story had been fleshed out more, I would have been intrigued by all the psychic mumbo-jumbo going on here. Perhaps this is one story best treated as a pleasant diversion by people who have read and enjoyed the stories that come after it, I don’t know. As it is, I think I may check out the author’s other series, but I’m not sold on this series based on this underdeveloped short story.
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