A Touch Mortal

A Touch Mortal by Leah Clifford follows Eden a girl with a lot of power.  Eden is sitting on the beach when she meets Az, they fall in love in about three pages.  AZ is an Angel that is half fallen and he is friends with Gabiel an angel who works upstairs.   Az finds out from his friend Gabriel that Eden has no path and is destined to kill herself, that she will be a sider.  So Az and Gabriel work together to make Eden upset so she will kill herself.  When Eden wakes she finds herself in a strange house.  She finds out that she's a sider and has a touch that can cause others to kill themselves.  She is also able to kill other siders (who since had thought they were invincible and were all suicidal to start with) with a kiss.

Sound complicated?  Well the book is worse.  There are an excessive amount of characters, many who are important but do not show up often.  The mythology is strange and badly explained with lots of talk of upstairs and downstairs and siders which are never fully explained and it takes about half of the book for the reader to understand what is going on.  The two romances are very passionless and none of the characters are very likable.   

Appropriateness:  There is no drugs or alcohol or sex in this book.  However the book seems to glamorize suicide.  In the mythology that the author created suicide is looked upon as a path that one is destined to follow and two of the characters create a false tragedy to encourage Eden to kill herself.  All of the siders (who have powers) are people who committed suicide.  One of the characters talks about how romantic her suicide pact was.  The ability that Eden and the other siders have is spreading a touch, the touch compels people to be extremely depressed and suicidal, one of the characters watches as someone she touched jumps from a bridge while others make bets over if he'll do it or not.  I'd be sure to talk about suicide with a child who reads this book.  The book is not good enough that a teen is going to fall in love with any of the characters and want to be like them but a talk can't hurt.  I would put the interest level as 14+

If you're looking for a book about Angels I suggest Unearthly (Unearthly - Trilogy) or Halo  If you would like a book about fallen angels I suggest Fallen or Hush, Hush.  All are much better than this book.  I will give it two stars because I was interested enough to finish the book.

Review copy obtained from Amazon Vine