Colleen Oakley

A 28-year-old recluse with a unique allergy to physical contact with other people is forced to reenter the world after her mother's death, finding friendship with a 10-year-old troubled boy and love with his adoptive father.

A Novel

Close Enough to Touch

María Belén

3.5 stars

I must admit I judged this book by its genre. Inicially I thought this would be either a fuffly and light romance or something super sad (like Me Before You). Thankfully I was wrong and it was neither. 

I found this book to be bothe deep and at the same time funny. Jubilee is a wonderful character. I loved seeing her grow confident and make friends and find herself. Her character development is amazing. 
Eric is also a good character, if a bit too clueless at times. His chapters were the one that made me laugh the most. And of course there's Aja, my favourite character. I loved him and I felt for him so much. And his obsession with the X-Men comics remainded me of myself when I was his age. 

I enjoyed this book much more than I expected. Colleen Oakley's writing is simple but deep. It gets to you and makes you connect with hercharacters. 

Close Enough to Touch is a lovely book. I liked it a lot.

Hala Abdulaziz 

I liked many of the aspects this book covered , like how we got to see Eric struggle with parenting and how it was soo emotional to get to go through it with Aja considering his circumstances, however , I have to say that this book got so weird sometimes , flat and almost two dimensional, I almost felt detached from the story sometimes because the characters were acting like cartoons or would suddenly do something that wouldn’t match their personalities.. anyhow , the ending is a little bit hard to decide if it’s good or not , I mean I don’t hate it but .. I honestly don’t know , it was nice I guess ?
 I honestly expect something much better from this book , I mean the concept is really interesting but the execution isn’t that good

Lisa ✩ @lifeinlit

Can you imagine almost dying from mere skin contact with another person? Someone kisses you and you go into anaphylactic shock?! When I first read that Jubilee Jenkins suffers from this illness, I had no idea how much this story would actually impact me. It's not solely that disease in and of itself that left me speechless... but all of the rest that goes with it. Jubilee suffered a kissing incident at school (which was all done on a dare by classmates to see if the rumors were true. How horrible!) where she almost dies. From that point forward, she becomes a recluse and refuses to leave her home. To make it worse... her mother leaves to go live with her boyfriend, leaving Jubilee home alone, where she stays, inside her home, very little contact with the outside world, for over nine years. Nine years! When Jubilee learns that her mother has passed away and her stepfather will no longer be sending checks her way to pay for bills and such, Jubilee decides that her recluse days have come to an end and she must learn to live life like everyone else. She needs a job, and this will inevitably lead to leaving her home. Talk about stressful!

Oh, how I felt for Jubilee. Though I suffer from anxiety to a certain degree myself, I can't even imagine how hard it must have been for her to realize that the life as she was so used to was over and she must start doing things differently. The idea of leaving a house that you haven't left in nine years... and not just leaving, but going out into the world and actually working a job in the public. You add to that her horrific disease where she cannot come into any contact with another person for fear of dying... yeah, Jubilee won my empathy vote. Wow. And to think people actually suffer like this. It blew my mind.

Aside from Jubilee and how much I felt for her, I also found myself really empathizing with Eric as well. This guy is trying everything he can to do what he feels is right, and still he keeps pulling the short straw. Eric's own teenage daughter will not speak to him, and he's at a complete loss as to how to remedy this. This adopted son, Aja, falls into his hands when his best friend and wife pass away tragically, leaving Eric as the only person for Aja to be with. Aja has his own struggles, leaving this twosome in a heap of drama and conflict. Oh man, this poor guy... I just wanted to help him any way I could. Life is never easy... but these two definitely had it harder than most.

As you can probably tell, this story really touched me. I read a lot of emotional stories about illnesses, both mental and physical, and I love learning more about how people deal with their disabilities. This story, however, really packed a punch stronger than most. I'm not sure exactly why it touched me so deeply, other than the way it was written. It was so hard to put down and I just wanted to constantly know what was going to happen next. What would happen for these two tortured souls. If they would ever be "okay" and how they would cope with everything that was thrown their way. I really felt as though I knew these characters on a personal level. This is such a powerful and even hopeful story, and I definitely recommend it. It's a great summer beach read for sure, so add this one to your TBR's!

 

  


 
Audiobook Impressions:
Yay for two narrators!! When books have two points of view, I'm always a huge fan of having two narrators. Especially when one is a male and one's a female. In this story, we get both Jubilee's and Eric's points of view, so having the individual narrators with their own personalities and unique voices was a major plus! I also loved the addition of the third voice to read the parts that were not from either character's point of view. Overall, this was a fantastic audiobook and I'd definitely recommend going this route when reading this book.
 

  


(Thanks to Gallery Books for the review copy!)

Find this review and others like it at Lost in Literature!

An untraditional, but beautiful love story about the power and possibilities of the human heart. And how two people can touch each other - without ever even touching.

Cath

Actual rating: 4.5/5 stars

Review:
Where has this author been all my life?? What an amazing book! I never thought there would come a day where I gush and squeal over a Contemporary Adult Fiction, but this beauty showed up and proved me wrong!

Another thing that stood out most for me in this book was Jubilee’s character development. We see her break out of her shell and watch her grow to become this woman with courage and true spirit. However you see it, it’s a slow burn of a book. The story literally revolves around two characters, their job and their family. That’s it. But when both the characters’ lives intertwine, that’s when things get interesting. In between the angst, we get this perfect blend of wit and sarcasm. Eric and Jubilee are such dorks when they’re around one another. Things just intensify when you read about them being together, yet ironically they’re constantly being adorable and awkward around one another. I had some good laughs with this book, as you can tell!

Close Enough to Touch A Novel

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