Audiobook Review: Close Enough to Touch by Colleen Oakley

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Close Enough to Touch
Author: Colleen Oakley
Narrators: Candace Thaxton, Kirby Heyborne, Jonathan Todd Ross
Publisher: Gallery Books
Publication date: March 7, 2017
Print length: 352 pages
Audio length: 11 hours 38 minutes
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Library
Rating:

Can you miss something you never had?

Jubilee Jenkins is no ordinary librarian. With a rare allergy to human touch, any skin-to-skin contact could literally kill her. But after retreating into solitude for nearly ten years, Jubilee’s decided to brave the world again, despite the risks. Armed with a pair of gloves, long sleeves, and her trusty bicycle, she finally ventures out the front door—and into her future.

Eric Keegan has troubles of his own. With his daughter from a failed marriage no longer speaking to him, and his brilliant, if psychologically troubled, adopted son attempting telekinesis, Eric’s struggling to figure out how his life got so off course, and how to be the dad—and man—he wants so desperately to be. So when an encounter over the check-out desk at the local library entangles his life with that of a beautiful—albeit eccentric—woman, he finds himself wanting nothing more than to be near her.

Jubilee Jenkins achieved New York Times-level fame at age six, when her rare medical condition made her an object of wonder. After years of illness and endless tests, she’s finally diagnosed with an unusual form of contact dermatitis — she’s allergic to contact with human skin. And she doesn’t just break out in hives; inadvertent or even slight contact can literally kill her. A cruel prank in high school sent her into anaphylactic shock. For Jubilee, touching is a matter of life and death.

After her mother leaves her at age seventeen, Jubilee spends the next nine years secluded in her own home. She earns an online degree, attends interesting courses, reads a ton of books, and thanks to the internet, can get anything she needs without ever venturing past her front door. But when Jubilee receives word that her mother has died, she is also told that her stepfather will no longer support her and send her the monthly allowance she’s been relying on. She’s inherited her mother’s house, but has no income. If she wants to keep the electricity on and keep herself fed, she’ll have to do the unthinkable — step outside, rejoin the world, and find a job.

A fortuitous meeting with an old classmate leads Jubilee to an opening for a circulation assistant at the local library. Battling to overcome the agoraphobia she’s developed over the years, she bicycles to work each day, wears gloves and other protective clothing to stay safe from any threat of human contact, and slowly becomes acclimated to being around other people. When a dad and his young son come to story hour one day, a new connection is established, and Jubilee starts looking forward to seeing them again.

Meanwhile, in alternating chapters, we also spend time with Eric. The divorced father of a 14-year-old girl who refuses to speak to him (or even respond to his texts), Eric meanwhile has his hands full caring for the troubled boy he adopted — the son of Eric’s best friends, who died tragically and had named him as Aja’s guardian. Eric struggles to connect with Aja and help him with his grief, but makes little headway until a dramatic encounter with Jubilee changes all of their lives.

From there, we see how Jubilee and Eric start to know one another, how she forms a bond with Aja, and how she gradually opens herself to the idea that life can change for her. It’s a painful process for her to admit that being isolated and safe isn’t the same as being happy, and it takes a monumental amount of courage for Jubilee to allow herself to dream of something more with Eric.

Close Enough to Touch has a fascinating premise that’s impossible to stop thinking about. The author’s note at the end makes clear that Jubilee’s type of allergy doesn’t actually exist… but what if it did? What kind of life could someone have when the merest touch could kill them? I was completely absorbed by Jubilee’s medical condition, the way she’d adapted her life to protect herself, and then the cautious bravery she shows in trying to change her life for the better.

The chapters from Eric’s perspective are perhaps slightly less compelling, but I did appreciate his journey with Aja. Particularly moving is his attempt to reconnect with his daughter through books; when he finds her school reading journal, he starts reading the books she describes (Twilight, The Virgin Suicides, The Notebook), hoping to find common ground or at least understand what matters to her. At first, he’s completely stumped, but conversations with Jubilee help him start to see what a young teen might find moving or inspiring or relatable. Even when his daughter seems to ignore him, the books provide a way for him to communicate to her that he cares.

The audiobook narration is mostly strong. (I was baffled to see three narrators listed; it took me a bit to realize that one must be the person who reads the sections of the Times article interspersed throughout the book). The narrator for Jubilee does a great job conveying her self-doubt, her fear, and her courage. The narrator for Eric is mostly strong, although his voice tends to get screechy when voicing Aja’s more emotional moments.

Overall, I really enjoyed Close Enough to Touch. So why did I rate it 3.5 stars and not higher? It’s the epilogue. In Close Enough to Touch, the book really kept me going all the way through and had me invested in the characters and their lives. Without getting into spoilers, all I can say about the epilogue is that it ties up the book in a very pretty, sweet bow… but skips over so much time and so many occurrences, condensing everything into this neat little wrap-up that shortchanges the characters’ journeys. It baffled me, honestly. Why not tell more of the story that comes between the final chapter and the epilogue? Instead, the books ending feels tacked-on and rushed, and left me feeling let down.

Still… with a unique, engaging premise and characters we can really care about, Close Enough to Touch provides a warm, emotional reading or listening experience. Close Enough to Touch is one of Colleen Oakley’s earlier books, and while I’m glad to have read it, I’m also happy to note that her writing and storytelling have gotten stronger and stronger.

For more by Colleen Oakley, check out my reviews of:

The Invisible Husband of Frick Island
The Mostly True Story of Tanner and Louise

And stay tuned — her next book, Jane and Dan at the End of the World, will be released in March 2025, and I can’t wait to read it!

21Dec2024

Book Review: The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: The Wishing Game
Author: Meg Shaffer
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Publication date: May 30, 2023
Print length: 320 pages
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Purchased

Years ago, a reclusive mega-bestselling children’s author quit writing under mysterious circumstances. Suddenly he resurfaces with a brand-new book and a one-of-a-kind competition, offering a prize that will change the winner’s life in this absorbing and whimsical novel.

Make a wish. . . .

Lucy Hart knows better than anyone what it’s like to grow up without parents who loved her. In a childhood marked by neglect and loneliness, Lucy found her solace in books, namely the Clock Island series by Jack Masterson. Now a twenty-six-year-old teacher’s aide, she is able to share her love of reading with bright, young students, especially seven-year-old Christopher Lamb, who was left orphaned after the tragic death of his parents. Lucy would give anything to adopt Christopher, but even the idea of becoming a family seems like an impossible dream without proper funds and stability.

But be careful what you wish for. . . .

Just when Lucy is about to give up, Jack Masterson announces he’s finally written a new book. Even better, he’s holding a contest at his home on the real Clock Island, and Lucy is one of the four lucky contestants chosen to compete to win the one and only copy.

For Lucy, the chance of winning the most sought-after book in the world means everything to her and Christopher. But first she must contend with ruthless book collectors, wily opponents, and the distractingly handsome (and grumpy) Hugo Reese, the illustrator of the Clock Island books. Meanwhile, Jack “the Mastermind” Masterson is plotting the ultimate twist ending that could change all their lives forever.

. . . You might just get it.

For all the adult readers who miss the sense of wonder and delight that a good children’s books series can bring… have I got a book for you!

The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer is a quest story for kids who believe in wishes… and then grow up. In this sweet, inventive, lovely tale, the reclusive author of the bestselling Clock Island children’s book series announces that he’s written a new book after a six-year gap… but there’s only one copy, and it will be gifted to the person who wins his contest, which is open to only a select few.

Jack chuckled. “The book exists. And there is only one copy of it in the world. I typed it up and hid it away.”

“And you’re seriously going to entrust it to some stranger?”

“No, but I shall whimsically entrust it to some stranger.”

Shades of Willy Wonka, right?

One of author Jack Masterson’s most devoted fans is Lucy Hart, a kindergarten teacher’s aide whose deepest, most heartfelt wish is to adopt Christopher, an orphaned seven-year-old who’s become the light of her life. Reality interferes in the form of finances: Without an apartment of her own, steady income, and a car, Lucy has no chance of getting approved to foster or adopt. Perhaps, the social worker suggests, it would be kinder to tell Christopher that it’s just not going to happen.

Just as Lucy is verging on despair, the news of Jack’s contest breaks. And Lucy has a secret: At age 13, she ran away to Clock Island and met Jack Masterson. Thanks to being able to solve his riddle, she is one of the four people chosen to compete — and if she wins, she’ll own the exclusive rights to his new book, which she can then sell for enough money to make her dreams of a family with Christopher come true.

Without delving too much further into plot details, let me just say that The Wishing Game is heart-warming, enchanting, whimsical, and full of joy. It’s a book for and about adults, but retains the sense of childish wonder that the best children’s books provide. It’s also a gift for those who love and cherish books, and who believe that stories are more than words on a page.

“Why do only brave kids get their wishes granted?” she asked.

“Because only brave children know that wishing is never enough.”

I loved so much about The Wishing Game. The characters are terrific, especially Lucy, Hugo, and Jack. There’s a romantic storyline, but it’s just one part of the whole, and fits well within the overall weave of the tale. Hugo’s artwork sounds amazing, and I wish it were real! Meg Shaffer does a fantastic job of taking fictional works of art — both Hugo’s paintings and Jack’s books — and making them come to life through her vivid descriptions.

The narrative brilliantly weaves together Lucy’s past — especially the very deep childhood wounds she carries — and the future she hopes for, incorporating a child’s wishes and beliefs into the fabric of an adult life. I loved how all the various pieces come together by the end. Realistic? Maybe not, but this is a book about dreams and wishes. It works.

I came to The Wishing Game after reading the author’s more recent novel, The Lost Story. I do still love The Lost Story best, but The Wishing Game is lovely and wonderful in its own special way, and I’m so happy to have made time to read it.

24Aug2023

Book Review: Mika in Real Life by Emiko Jean

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Mika in Real Life
Author: Emiko Jean
Publisher: William Morrow
Publication date: August 2, 2022
Length: 384 pages
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Purchased
Rating:

One phone call changes everything.

At thirty-five, Mika Suzuki’s life is a mess. Her last relationship ended in flames. Her roommate-slash-best friend might be a hoarder. She’s a perpetual disappointment to her traditional Japanese parents. And, most recently, she’s been fired from her latest dead-end job.

Mika is at her lowest point when she receives a phone call from Penny—the daughter she placed for adoption sixteen years ago. Penny is determined to forge a relationship with her birth mother, and in turn, Mika longs to be someone Penny is proud of. Faced with her own inadequacies, Mika embellishes a fact about her life. What starts as a tiny white lie slowly snowballs into a fully-fledged fake life, one where Mika is mature, put-together, successful in love and her career.

The details of Mika’s life might be an illusion, but everything she shares with curious, headstrong Penny is real: her hopes, dreams, flaws, and Japanese heritage. The harder-won heart belongs to Thomas Calvin, Penny’s adoptive widower father. What starts as a rocky, contentious relationship slowly blossoms into a friendship and, over time, something more. But can Mika really have it all—love, her daughter, the life she’s always wanted? Or will Mika’s deceptions ultimately catch up to her? In the end, Mika must face the truth—about herself, her family, and her past—and answer the question, just who is Mika in real life?

Perfect for fans of Kiley Reid’s Such a Fun Age, Gayle Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, and Rebecca Serle’s In Five Years, Mika in Real Life is at once a heart-wrenching and uplifting novel that explores the weight of silence, the secrets we keep, and what it means to be a mother.

In this brilliant new novel by from Emiko Jean, the author of the New York Times bestselling young adult novel Tokyo Ever After, comes a whip-smart, laugh-out-loud funny, and utterly heartwarming novel about motherhood, daughterhood, and love—how we find it, keep it, and how it always returns.

I loved Emiko Jean’s YA duology Tokyo Ever After and Tokyo Dreaming, and had my eye on this adult novel ever since I first saw it announced. Finally, I had the opportunity to read it… and loved it.

In Mika in Real Life, Mika’s life really is a mess. She lives with her best friend in a house that’s a disaster zone, doesn’t speak to her parents, has lost yet another meaningless job, and has no romantic life to speak of. Mika’s thoughts are haunted by memories and what-ifs. At age 19, she gave a baby daughter up for adoption, and not a day goes by when she doesn’t think of Penny with longing and love.

When Penny contacts Mika out of the blue, Mika is delighted. She’s received annual letters from Penny’s adoptive parents with updates on her life, but nothing prepares her for the joy of connecting with this vibrant teen. As they progress from phone calls and texts to regular FaceTime chats, Penny wants to know more and more about Mika’s life — but Mika feels like more and more of a failure. She just wants to be someone Penny can be proud of, and begins fudging details, only to be thrown into a panic when Penny announces she’s coming to Portland for a visit in two weeks.

A rational response might be to own up to the deception, but instead Mika doubles down. With the help of her friends, she creates a fake life to show Penny, including everything from having her ex pose as her current (and very loving) boyfriend to borrowing an artist’s workspace to stage an opening for what she’s described as her very own gallery. As expected, the lies all blow up in Mika’s face and threaten to permanently ruin her developing relationship with Penny and her father Thomas.

While I cringed throughout this section — because of course it was all going to go wrong! — fortunately, this is not the ultimate storyline of the entire book. Instead, from this point, Mika ends up reexamining her life, her relationships, and how she got to this point. Yes, it’s a terrible moment, but we can understand Mika’s choices and root for her to make amends.

There’s so much more going on this book, and it’s deep and powerful. Without getting into spoiler territory, the more we learn about Mika’s childhood as well as her pregnancy, the more we see how much sorrow and pain Mika carries, and why the choices she’s made feel out of her own control so much of the time. She’s had to cope the best she could, not always well or in a way that’s rational or healthy, but she’s survived, and that’s a lot.

I loved seeing Mika’s bumpy road to connecting with Penny, as well as seeing the lovely friendship she has with her best friend. Mika’s troubled relationship with her own mother is very sad, but well explained. The deeper story about the traumas in Mika’s past and her ongoing struggles is very thoughtful, emotional, and powerful. I also appreciated how sensitively the cultural issues related to the adoption were handled — it’s clear that Penny’s adoptive parents were loving and nurturing, but they also were either unable or unwilling to give her the exposure to her Japanese heritage that teen Penny is hungry for.

Another powerful theme running throughout Mika in Real Life is about mother-daughter relationships, and how the disappointments, deferred dreams, and painful moments of one generation can spill over into the next. Seeing Mika recognize and then attempt to break the cycle of disapproval and living for another person’s dreams is very relatable and emotional.

“How does this end? Mika wondered. Not how she wanted it to. She thought of Caroline dressing Penny in clothes that matched her own. Of Hiromi forcing Mika to take dance lessons. How mothers see their daughters as echos, as do-overs, as younger versions of themselves who might have the life they didn’t or have the same life as they did, but better. But children aren’t second chances, Mika realized with a start. It was unfair for Hiromi to believe her desires should live inside Mika. Children are made to take a parent’s love and pass it along.”

The synopsis describes Mika in Real Life as “laugh-out-loud funny” — and I’d say, no, it isn’t. There are definitely some lighter, funny moments, but this book is much more on the thoughtful, moving side. I’d hate for someone to approach it expecting humor to be dominant and then feel let down. “Heart-wrenching and uplifting” is far more accurate, as are “whip-smart” and “utterly heartwarming”.

I listened to the audiobook, and loved the narrator’s gifted depiction of Mika’s internal life, as well as the well-voiced characters surrounding Mika, especially Penny. The narration also offers the experience of hearing the Japanese words and phrases spoken accurately, which I really appreciated.

Overall, this is a powerful depiction of resilience and love, with memorable characters and a strong, well-developed plot. Highly recommended.

5Dec2017

Book Review: Far From the Tree by Robin Benway

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

A contemporary novel about three adopted siblings who find each other at just the right moment.

Being the middle child has its ups and downs.

But for Grace, an only child who was adopted at birth, discovering that she is a middle child is a different ride altogether. After putting her own baby up for adoption, she goes looking for her biological family, including—

Maya, her loudmouthed younger bio sister, who has a lot to say about their newfound family ties. Having grown up the snarky brunette in a house full of chipper redheads, she’s quick to search for traces of herself among these not-quite-strangers. And when her adopted family’s long-buried problems begin to explode to the surface, Maya can’t help but wonder where exactly it is that she belongs.

And Joaquin, their stoic older bio brother, who has no interest in bonding over their shared biological mother. After seventeen years in the foster care system, he’s learned that there are no heroes, and secrets and fears are best kept close to the vest, where they can’t hurt anyone but him.

Far From the Tree is a beautiful, moving look at families — what makes a family, and what keeps a family together.

Grace, Maya, and Joaquin are three lonely teens, each going through their own brand of suffering.

For Grace, it’s the pain of an unexpected pregnancy, followed by giving up her beautiful baby for adoption. Grace has loving and supportive parents, but giving up her daughter makes her wonder for the first time what might have driven her own biological mother to give her up.

Maya is the older of her family’s two daughters — but she’s adopted, and her sister Lauren is biological. Her parents’ marriage is on the brink of disaster, and Maya and Lauren have become the keepers of their mother’s secret, hiding the evidence from their father of just how bad their mother’s drinking has gotten.

Joaquin is the oldest of the three, but his life has not been nearly as smooth as Maya’s and Grace’s. The two girls were adopted at birth by loving parents, but Joaquin was never adopted, instead spending his life in the foster system, always ready to pack his belongings into a trash bag and move on to a new placement at a moment’s notice. And even those he’s been with Mark and Linda for two years now — two kind and affectionate people who want to give Joaquin a permanent home — he fears hurting those around him, and doesn’t want to let anyone get close in case he hurts them or ruins their lives.

After Grace gives up her baby, she tells her parents that she’d like to find her bio mom, and they let her know that although they don’t know where to find her, Grace does in fact have two biological siblings living not too far away. Grace, Maya, and Joaquin find that they have a bond almost instantly, and despite their vastly different lives and circumstances, they quickly grow to trust and love one another, and to find in the others a sense of belonging that they never knew they needed.

Well, I could really just cut this review short at this point and simply say: I loved this book. The chapters alternate POV narrators between the three siblings, so we get a clear look at each one’s inner thoughts, fears, and hopes. There are scars left from their early lives and the lingering question mark — were they abandoned? Did their biological mother love them? Would she want anything to do with them if they ever managed to find her?

I won’t give away the ending, but suffice it to say that it’s satisfying without being predictable or too neat or too perfect. Over the course of the novel, I came to care so deeply about Grace, Maya, and Joaquin. Maybe it’s the mom in me, but I just wanted to scoop them all up, give them hugs, and tell them that they’re loved, and that they’ll be okay. They all have people in their lives who love and support them, but they still face hurdles around trust and belonging and feeling truly wanted and secure. Through their bonding as brother and sisters, they start to open up and feel connected, and it was so special to see how they find ways to support each other, accept each other, and offer unconditional love.

Far From the Tree is just a lovely read, and I highly recommend it for anyone who enjoys well-defined characters and engrossing family situations. Maybe I take something from this book as an adult that’s different than what a teen would get from it, and I’m actually trying to push my teen-aged son to read it (despite the fact that he — gasp — does not believe in reading for fun).

In any event, I’m very happy to have read Far From the Tree. Once I started, I just really couldn’t stop. Great writing, great story — check it out!

_________________________________________

The details:

Title: Far From the Tree
Author: Robin Benway
Publisher: HarperTeen
Publication date: October 3, 2017
Length: 384 pages
Genre: Young adult
Source: Library

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