Touch by Jus Accardo

"When a strange boy tumbles down a river embankment and lands at her feet, seventeen-year-old adrenaline junkie Deznee Cross snatches the opportunity to piss off her father by bringing the mysterious hottie with ice blue eyes home.

Except there’s something off with Kale. He wears her shoes in the shower, is overly fascinated with things like DVDs and vases, and acts like she’ll turn to dust if he touches her. It’s not until Dez’s father shows up, wielding a gun and knowing more about Kale than he should, that Dez realizes there’s more to this boy—and her father’s “law firm”—than she realized.

Kale has been a prisoner of Denazen Corporation—an organization devoted to collecting “special” kids known as Sixes and using them as weapons—his entire life. And, oh yeah, his touch? It kills. The two team up with a group of rogue Sixes hellbent on taking down Denazen before they’re caught and her father discovers the biggest secret of all. A secret Dez has spent her life keeping safe.

A secret Kale will kill to protect" Description from GoodReads

I just reread this description... I'm not sure I know what this "secret" is Kale will kill to protect, the description basically spills all the "secrets" right there. Nothing shocking happens. Oh, on with my review (sorry to spoil it for you).

Review:
Deznee Cross is a rebellious teenager to the nth degree. She will do anything, and I mean ANYTHING in an attempt to make her emotionless father upset, which he never is, so it's all just a ridiculous waste of time. As is most everything else about this book. The characters in general aren't at all believable as humans, with or without abilities. From Deznee's willingness to follow a guy she's just met to an unknown destination, to her fathers complete lack of emotion about anything, especially when it comes to his own child, to Kale, who I had a whole laundry list of issues with.

Dez's "badass" boyfriend Kale was the worst part for me. From the moment she meets Kale she blindly follows him, running away into the night with a guy she just saw kill someone not 10 minutes before, oh and who just tried to kill HER, (yes, I saw the explanation that it was to rebel against her father, I'm not buying it, no one would do this). And speaking of stuff that's not believable, the inconsistencies in what Kale knows and doesn't know were ridiculous. Basically the only things he doesn't know pertain to sexual activity, he's the world's best dancer, but he has no idea why a cute girl would want to touch him. This was just an excuse on the author's part to explain in excruciating detail hand holding and kissing. I guess it's supposed to be tantalizing, but I found it awkward and ridiculous. It further led to the feeling that Kale was bland, boring and sort of an idiot. An example of further idiocy? Sure! If Kale is deathly afraid of Deznee's father, why would he go into her house after he knows that Cross lives there? This kid can kill with a single touch and the one thing that scares him is this dude, logic tells you he'd avoid that dude's house like the plague and go off being a "badass killer" somewhere else, but no. I guess he wants to get it on with Deznee SO BADLY that he repeatedly goes to the house of the guy trying to kill him. We're supposed to believe that teenage hormones conquer all fear and danger, how romantic. I found myself wishing Deznee would ditch Kale and get back together with Alex, at least he sounded interesting and the brief back story we got on he and Dez was far more interesting and believable then anything we learned about Kale.

I should also mention the bad sentence structure, forced teenage language and occasional misspelled word too. These things usually are not a huge deal for me of the story is good, but in this case, nothing is good, so those of you who are sticklers for good writing skills, look elsewhere (there's even a part where they call Alex by a different name, as if his name used to be Fred and they replaced it with Alex and forgot to change one of the names, oops).

Bottom line: The book was predicable and forgettable, not to mention the unbelievable characters. Not the worst book ever, but still a waste of time. Grade: C-.