Book #50: Touch

Title: Touch (First in the Reaper novella series)

Author: Jennifer Snyder

Date started reading: July 24, 2013
Date finished reading: July 24, 2013

Publish date: August 2011
ASIN: B005JKMWRU
Number of pages: 74

Official summary: "Seventeen-year-old Rowan Harper knows her life is forever changed the moment her schizophrenic mother commits suicide. What Rowan doesn't realize is how much her mother's choice altered her own fate. It's not until after meeting Jet, a sapphire-eyed dead boy, Rowan begins to learn of her new destiny as becoming her mother's replacement for something she never knew existed." (http://jennifersnydersblog.blogspot.com)

How I obtained the book: Got an eBook free through Amazon

My commentary:

• I swore and swore for years that I would never read eBooks. I am a book purist, and I love print books. I'm very loyal to printed books, but I recently got a smartphone (my very first smartphone -- I know I'm way behind the tech curve), and I saw a deal posted on Facebook to get this eBook free through Amazon. I loved the cover, so I looked into it. The storyline intrigued me, so I sold out and got the eBook. I'm glad I did it, but it's hard not to view myself as a eBook sell-out. 
• Regardless of how I feel about this book's status as an eBook-only publication, I frankly loved it. The book was great. The story was engaging and so well-written that I got addicted one chapter in. 
• The fact that Rowan's mother saw spirits and spoke to them because she was a "link" between the living world and the afterlife led to her being diagnosed as schizophrenic. I love when I can find books that combine my interest in the paranormal and in mental illnesses.... especially while also having beautiful covers.

Memorable quotes:

• "My mother had ended her life five months ago, and, to be perfectly honest, my dad should have ended his right alongside her. Since then, he’d barely even looked at me. Ever since my mother’s suicide, our house had felt as bitterly cold and gloomy as a moonless night in the dead of winter." ~ Rowan
• "I’d never given much thought to my future before, but now, as the certainty of becoming like my mother tainted my mind like poison, my future didn’t look too wonderful. A never-ending supply of monotone shrinks and colorful pills — this was what my mother’s life had consisted of." ~ Rowan
• "In the end, it was almost ironic how all the pills doctors had prescribed over the years in an effort to save (my mom's) sanity had eventually been what she’d chosen to end her life with. Who knows, maybe in her eyes they’d finally done their job." ~ Rowan
• "It was all real, (Jet) being Death made perfect sense in some strange way. All of my confusion , annoyance , anger, and fear melted away like the disappearing snow outside. The reality of what I was doing sank in. I was standing alone in my bedroom with Death… and he had the face of an angel." ~ Rowan
• “The best part of me died a long time ago.” ~ Rowan's father
• "Cemeteries are meant to be places where you bury the dead, but what people often don’t realize is that they’re also a place where old memories lay buried — memories that don’t resurface until the very moment you step inside." ~ Rowan
• "Even if it meant keeping it our own little secret, because Love is the only thing that not even Death can kill." ~ Rowan about her and Jet

Buy on Amazon.com: Touch (A Reaper Novella)