Touch

December 15, 2014
A dark thriller that asks readers to imagine whom they would be if they could be anyone. Literally. The entity known as Kepler has been hopping from body to body for centuries, ever since trauma threw him from his original, dying body into his murderer's. All it takes now is a moment of skin-to-skin contact to jump from one skin to the next. Mostly, Kepler sees these borrowed bodies and lives as a kind of hobby, something to fix up a bit before moving on. But Josephine Cebula has become something more, because somebody killed her while looking for the spirit temporarily inhabiting her flesh. That somebody has a file on Josephine and Kepler that's remarkably accurate-except for the part where it blames them for four murders. This fast-paced tale starts with a bang and continues with a bunch more of them. The pace never slows, and there are plenty of chases and fights, but the novel still reveals more and more depth as it goes along. North (The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, 2014) fully imagines how the long and varied life of a "ghost" could work to slowly strip away empathy for ordinary humans-as Kepler says, "consequences are for the flesh"-and could also create an intense yearning for human connection. The high stakes and breakneck pace of the plot will draw readers in, and the meditations on what it means to be human and to be loved will linger long after the last shot is fired.

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Starred review from February 15, 2015
For readers who were wondering what North could possibly do to follow up the magnificent The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August (2014), here's your answer: not a sequel to that mind-bending novel but something just as memorable. It's tricky to describe the book, partly because we don't even know the gender or real name of its narrator, but try this: there are, in the world, people who inhabit other people's bodies, who can move between bodies merely by touching them. These people call themselves ghosts, call the bodies they inhabit skins; these people are dead but not dead, their new form of existence was triggered by a violent event that kills their original bodies and sends theirlet's call them soulsinto another body. Kepler, the novel's narrator, is looking for revenge on the people who killed a woman whose body Kepler inhabited for a time; Kepler discovers that there is a group of people who have dedicated themselves to eradicating the world of people like Keplera mission that involves, naturally, killing the ghosts' corporeal hosts. It's a hugely imaginative story, with some seriously out-there elements (for a period, Kepler is actually wearing the body of a man who tried to kill Kepler), the kind of book you sort of sit there and just think about for awhile after you've finished reading it, processing it, wrapping your head around it. The pseudonymous author's real name wasn't known when Harry August was published, but she has since revealed herself to be Catherine Webb, author of the Horatio Lyle YA historical-adventure series and, under the name of Kate Griffin, several fantasy novels for adult readers. We can't wait to see what Claire North comes up with next.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)