Just One Touch by Maya Banks
Just One Touch by Maya Rodale
Rating: DNF
I'm starting this review by saying I could not finish this story. I tried my hardest and I got about 75% of the way through, but I just have too much to read and too little time in my life to waste another day on a story that was this hard to get through.
I want to also start by saying that in general I'm a fan of Maya Banks' work. In particular, her historical romances are some of my favorites. So, this is nothing against the genre or the author herself.
My problem comes from the story itself.
Our heroine is Jenna who was raised a religious cult environment and begins the book by escaping through the woods. She is obviously terrified and we find out later that this is well-founded. She has been kept locked up without any view into the outside world since she was four years old.
She escapes to Houston, TX where she is trying to steal the car of Isaac. Isaac works for an elite security team, yet he leaves his car unlocked and his keys in his car all the time. This is apparently an endearing quirk of his.
If you work in security, I would think you would take your own vehicle security pretty seriously. However, I don't work in security, so maybe this is a false assumption. -_-
Anyways, he catches Jenna trying to steal his car and as soon as he sees her face he wants to help her and protect her. He is also no longer upset that she is stealing his vehicle. Obviously she is too beautiful to be just an ordinary thief. To be fair, she is just trying to save herself which is made obvious when they start getting shot at.
Isaac is shot and can tell that he is dying, but Jenna's secret gift is that she can heal people with a touch. So she heals Isaac and at his insistence takes his car.
Now... Jenna has been hidden away from society since she was 4. She does not know how to drive. This becomes quickly obvious to Isaac, but I would just like to put in my own two cents. Had I not had loving parents and driver's ed, I would not have known which pedal did which thing when I first started learning to drive. Jenna has not really traveled from the bunker where she grew up. How was she even able to make a passable attempt at escaping in a vehicle? The world may never know.
Anyways, she makes it away. Isaac has backup arrive and the mysterious shooters have run off. Luckily, Isaac has GPS tracking in his truck so he is able to track Jenna down and take her home where he can keep an eye on her.
Isaac gets permission from his boss to focus on this new "case." He then goes home to Jenna and immediately decides that she is "his" and he will protect her at all costs. His team helps him to move her to a safe house where yet another person is shot and Jenna heals him. This new character now also feels everlasting gratitude to Jenna for saving his life and Isaac gets alpha dog jealous of their shared connection.
I could go into details about all of the action that ensues, but I think I'll sum it up by saying they are being chased by a mob boss type guy who had bought Jenna for his own personal use. They have to continuously move safe houses and Jenna is constantly trying to get away from them because she doesn't want any of them to be hurt trying to protect her. However, she does this in the most TSTL ways possible so she ends up putting everyone in more danger than they originally were.
Now, I really have to explain why I could not finish this story.
It is so inconsistent! To start off with, we get tones of description about Jenna's angelic looks. However, I could not describe to you Isaac at all. Now to be fair, maybe he is described in previous books which I have not read, but I would think a recap wouldn't be that hard to throw in. I wouldn't be able to tell you his race, hair color, eye color, height or body type. I can assume he is probably built since he is in security, but who knows? He could just be Paul Blart of the personal security world.
I wouldn't really be able to tell you what anyone else in the book looks like either, because the only real physical attributes are given to Jenna.
As someone who likes to picture the action in her head as she reads, this really took me out of the story a time or two. I wanted to be able to get the details that were missing. They just never showed up.
However, there was no lack of details in other respects. For instance, the amount of telling in this book was phenomenal. There were pages and pages of Isaac's thoughts which told me all about how much he cared for Jenna or about how tough his past was, but in his interactions with characters you would not have seen any of these details come forth. At one point Isaac remembers how he was involved with drugs and heavy alcohol usage and went through a tough time, but this never once comes up in any of his interactions with anyone else or in any other way throughout the book. If this is important enough to share with the audience, then shouldn't it be something that actually impacts the character throughout the story?
The other inconsistencies come from Jenna who was apparently sheltered from the world most of her life. She goes into great detail about the torture she was subjected to and how she was not allowed normal basic human decency. However, she certainly adapts really well to everything around her. She apparently learns how to drive fast enough to get away at the beginning of the novel. She is more than ready to lose her virginity to Isaac, even though she's never even seen anything sexual before. She also immediately knows what to do in the bedroom and what to do to please Isaac. Again, she grew up in a religious cult where even kissing was not something that happened. In fact, she tells Isaac she didn't really realize kissing was something people normally did. Then suddenly, she is a vixen in the bedroom after one day.
Finally, there is the fact that this all does happen over the course of 2-3 days. Isaac tells Jenna he loves her and wants to marry her on day 2. Jenna immediately accepts, even though she has yet to experience anything in the world. How does she know Isaac is what she really wants if he's the first person she's even met in 20 years that wasn't a cultist? How can he know she's the one for him when for most of the first half of the book he thought she was underage and was worried he was being a pervert?
I just was left with too many questions and the idea that none of those answers were going to be forthcoming.
However, I'd love to know what you think? Has anyone else read this book and really loved it? Did I miss a lot by not finishing the last quarter of the story? Or does anyone else have the same questions I have?
Let me know!
Until next review,
~Abby~
Rating: DNF
I'm starting this review by saying I could not finish this story. I tried my hardest and I got about 75% of the way through, but I just have too much to read and too little time in my life to waste another day on a story that was this hard to get through.
I want to also start by saying that in general I'm a fan of Maya Banks' work. In particular, her historical romances are some of my favorites. So, this is nothing against the genre or the author herself.
My problem comes from the story itself.
Our heroine is Jenna who was raised a religious cult environment and begins the book by escaping through the woods. She is obviously terrified and we find out later that this is well-founded. She has been kept locked up without any view into the outside world since she was four years old.
She escapes to Houston, TX where she is trying to steal the car of Isaac. Isaac works for an elite security team, yet he leaves his car unlocked and his keys in his car all the time. This is apparently an endearing quirk of his.
If you work in security, I would think you would take your own vehicle security pretty seriously. However, I don't work in security, so maybe this is a false assumption. -_-
Anyways, he catches Jenna trying to steal his car and as soon as he sees her face he wants to help her and protect her. He is also no longer upset that she is stealing his vehicle. Obviously she is too beautiful to be just an ordinary thief. To be fair, she is just trying to save herself which is made obvious when they start getting shot at.
Isaac is shot and can tell that he is dying, but Jenna's secret gift is that she can heal people with a touch. So she heals Isaac and at his insistence takes his car.
Now... Jenna has been hidden away from society since she was 4. She does not know how to drive. This becomes quickly obvious to Isaac, but I would just like to put in my own two cents. Had I not had loving parents and driver's ed, I would not have known which pedal did which thing when I first started learning to drive. Jenna has not really traveled from the bunker where she grew up. How was she even able to make a passable attempt at escaping in a vehicle? The world may never know.
Anyways, she makes it away. Isaac has backup arrive and the mysterious shooters have run off. Luckily, Isaac has GPS tracking in his truck so he is able to track Jenna down and take her home where he can keep an eye on her.
Isaac gets permission from his boss to focus on this new "case." He then goes home to Jenna and immediately decides that she is "his" and he will protect her at all costs. His team helps him to move her to a safe house where yet another person is shot and Jenna heals him. This new character now also feels everlasting gratitude to Jenna for saving his life and Isaac gets alpha dog jealous of their shared connection.
I could go into details about all of the action that ensues, but I think I'll sum it up by saying they are being chased by a mob boss type guy who had bought Jenna for his own personal use. They have to continuously move safe houses and Jenna is constantly trying to get away from them because she doesn't want any of them to be hurt trying to protect her. However, she does this in the most TSTL ways possible so she ends up putting everyone in more danger than they originally were.
Now, I really have to explain why I could not finish this story.
It is so inconsistent! To start off with, we get tones of description about Jenna's angelic looks. However, I could not describe to you Isaac at all. Now to be fair, maybe he is described in previous books which I have not read, but I would think a recap wouldn't be that hard to throw in. I wouldn't be able to tell you his race, hair color, eye color, height or body type. I can assume he is probably built since he is in security, but who knows? He could just be Paul Blart of the personal security world.
I wouldn't really be able to tell you what anyone else in the book looks like either, because the only real physical attributes are given to Jenna.
As someone who likes to picture the action in her head as she reads, this really took me out of the story a time or two. I wanted to be able to get the details that were missing. They just never showed up.
However, there was no lack of details in other respects. For instance, the amount of telling in this book was phenomenal. There were pages and pages of Isaac's thoughts which told me all about how much he cared for Jenna or about how tough his past was, but in his interactions with characters you would not have seen any of these details come forth. At one point Isaac remembers how he was involved with drugs and heavy alcohol usage and went through a tough time, but this never once comes up in any of his interactions with anyone else or in any other way throughout the book. If this is important enough to share with the audience, then shouldn't it be something that actually impacts the character throughout the story?
The other inconsistencies come from Jenna who was apparently sheltered from the world most of her life. She goes into great detail about the torture she was subjected to and how she was not allowed normal basic human decency. However, she certainly adapts really well to everything around her. She apparently learns how to drive fast enough to get away at the beginning of the novel. She is more than ready to lose her virginity to Isaac, even though she's never even seen anything sexual before. She also immediately knows what to do in the bedroom and what to do to please Isaac. Again, she grew up in a religious cult where even kissing was not something that happened. In fact, she tells Isaac she didn't really realize kissing was something people normally did. Then suddenly, she is a vixen in the bedroom after one day.
Finally, there is the fact that this all does happen over the course of 2-3 days. Isaac tells Jenna he loves her and wants to marry her on day 2. Jenna immediately accepts, even though she has yet to experience anything in the world. How does she know Isaac is what she really wants if he's the first person she's even met in 20 years that wasn't a cultist? How can he know she's the one for him when for most of the first half of the book he thought she was underage and was worried he was being a pervert?
I just was left with too many questions and the idea that none of those answers were going to be forthcoming.
However, I'd love to know what you think? Has anyone else read this book and really loved it? Did I miss a lot by not finishing the last quarter of the story? Or does anyone else have the same questions I have?
Let me know!
Until next review,
~Abby~
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