Very original idea, excellently realised. A fantastic book for the amount it makes you think about; life, death, identity, and what the important things are.

Well written, with a style that encourages you to discover, and then continue trying to figure out what's going on with the wider plot.

Not a happy book, could be found disturbing. Excellent if you want a modern book that will make you think. ( )

Give me one month as Kepler.

A "ghost," as Kepler, the protagonist, is known, is supposedly "born" when in a state of extreme danger, i e being murdered, and they want so bad to communicate with the person murdering them, that they switch into that person's mind and take them over. Sounds a bit touchy right?
At first I thought these ghosts were like vampires, because they're immortal, unless they're inside a body when it gets killed, and they don't have a chance to touch another human body and switch. But they don't drink blood, and they don't feed in any way off of a human body, other than to use it, for a certain amount of time. Some ghosts use human bodies for years, meeting a partner, creating children, living out a life, until they're old. Others just use them to get away from a situation that's dangerous. They can jump from person to person to person as long as they can find a way to touch flesh.
Many ghosts are despicable beings, not caring about what being "worn" does to their host. But Kepler is a ghost with a moral compass.
Then of course there's the most important aspect of a ghost, using them for revenge.
And this was my main enjoyment of this book, fantasizing about what I could do if I were a ghost and I could jump into bodies that were the trusted companions of people that had hurt me and abused me and used me in the past, doing things unknown to them until afterwards.
For example, I could jump into my ex-husband's brain, and go take money out of his fat bank account, and put it somewhere I could access it, and he'd never know the difference. I could go into the brains of EX co-workers, who made my workplace a hostile environment for me, and fix them up jiffy.

In this book, Kepler is on the trail of a killer or killers that work for an organization that is trying to eliminate ghosts. He was wearing the body of a beautiful young woman, that he had contracted with to use her body, when she was killed, shot down in a transit station. He had jumped from her body after she was shot, and then the killer tried to shoot the body he had just jumped to. He wants to know why they're so determined to kill him.
It became personal to him when they killed josephine, as he had cared about her. ( )

I have enormous respect for Claire North's writing. She has fascinating ideas, beautiful prose, poignant characterisations, a lively yet literary style, and keen observations on society/humanity.

However, I didn't love this novel as I hoped I would. I started off thinking it would be a 4 star rating, then a 5 star, but at some point my satisfaction dropped sharply, especially towards the end, and I am concluding on a 3 star review.

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD, read at your own risk.



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The novel is about an entity, mostly referred to as Kepler, who was born a human but--upon their death, many centuries ago--discovered that they were able to inhabit the bodies of other humans. While in possession of another person's body, Kepler's hosts have no memory or sense of the passage of time. They lose seconds, minutes, years of their lives--however long they are inhabited by a "ghost" entity. TOUCH makes use of a dual timeline narrative structure, flipping between past events that Kepler has lived, and present-day troubles which expand on the plot.

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Things I enjoyed:

The set up is fascinating and daunting in its ambition, with scope for a host of exploration. The prose runs smooth and clean and the execution of body-hopping is brilliantly done; North captures the exhilaration and ennui of a free-wheeling spirit, taking advantage to explore the circumstances Kepler can exploit.

The novel's strength lay in North's amazing ability to infuse Kepler with the personalities of those they inhabited while keeping Kepler's unique self intact in each one: a brilliant fusion of psyches, and a fascinating--if somewhat understated--examination of how our physical form manifests, interacts with, and reshapes our psychology. Questions of gender, identity, sexuality, and personality are all present, deftly examined with a surgical level of skill.

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Things I found lacking:

The MC has a motivation problem, imo. North sort of addresses this by building up how much ghosts care for the skins they inhabit, or at least can do in some cases, but when that is more or less the sum total of the MC's motivation for most of the book it starts to stretch a little thin. Kepler is quite right to point out that they could simply abscond into the night, or run. Or any number of options. It did mostly work but felt forced at points, and because the motivations of the other ghosts felt likewise thin, the whole driving force of the narrative was a little anemic.

At the heart of this issue with MC motivation is (again, imo) a power imbalance in the worldbuilding. Kepler is just too strong for anything to be much of a threat, so threats and emotional obstacles have to be generated in a way that feels slightly forced.

Kepler's relative strength in worldbuilding terms means that no human antagonist is ever going to be much of a threat. Therefore, I was unsurprised to find another ghost-entity in the antagonist's driving seat--and unfortunately, of all the characters in the novel, Galileo felt the least real. Kepler, despite his insubstantial nature, felt very real and very visceral, even when inhabiting other bodies. Galileo did not. Antagonists don't always have to be compelling, but it stood out to me in a book where almost everyone--including brief snapshots of myriad random passerbys--were otherweise so well drawn.

Going back to the power balance issue, I think if any of Galileo's plans had born fruit, a better-detailed human antagonist could have worked. For example, if someone really had developed a vaccine against ghosts, or figured out how to reliably create more, then Kepler really could have been in trouble.

As it was, the interpersonal drama between Kepler and Coyle (a human character) felt much more at the forefront, whereas the stuff with Galileo receded almost to the background at times, or at least felt that way because of lackluster stakes (and the lackluster stakes themselves being the result of sketchy character motivations. And novels need stakes!!)

All that to say, the final confrontation lacked punch. I didn't care much for Galileo, and there were very few surprises in the present-day timeline (almost all of the reveals occurred in the past-timeline). The final fight seemed extraordinarily drawn out, again with no surprises for the ending, and more weak character motivations that were seemingly dredged up at the last-minute to complicate an otherwise straightforward situation.


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TLDR: I do still think the novel was worth reading and very enjoyable but I found myself frustrated by structural/craft issues at a number of crucial moments.

In the final analysis, it felt like a worse version of 15 Lives of Harry August, in that it contained similar themes and a similarish type character/plot set up, but was overall far weaker in execution, although much faster paced. ( )

If you saw the movie Fallen, the premise of touch may be familiar -- a special being that can transfer to another body and effectively "take control" of it. Where this story differs from the thriller, is that it focuses on many people with this ability and how they cope and adapt. I loved how this story went into the real world implications of this concept. How could you grow old in someone elses body, denying them life? If you have no conscience that's one thing, but for good people this ability sounds more like a curse.

Where it fell short for me was a connection with the characters. With Claire Norths other book,The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, I was constantly worrying about what would happen, and feeling for the characters. In this one I didn't have the same connection. An interesting topic, and well explored but the connection with the characters left me feeling like something was missing. ( )

Engrossing and imaginative. ( )