Hopefully my Library gets the third one for me. I'd like to know how the story ends, but not enough to buy book three myself. ( )

LOVE!The great thing about A Touch Morbid is it actually does what a sequel should. It continues the story line while developing the characters and giving the reader new insight into the MC’s mind and the mind of the other characters that you have loved in the first book. An added PoV for one of Eden’s gang was added and learning more about that boy and his own internal struggles made me love the book even more.

Same bat problems, same bat channel but with twisty bits. Everything we thought we knew about Eden, Gabe, Az and Luke is torn to shreds and dare I say that Morbid was even more, well… morbid and dark that A Touch Mortal? My heart ached for everyone, I wanted them all to succeed. New information leads to new betrayals and Eden has way too much on her plate with keeping Az from falling sans Gabe to link everything together.

What I really loved the best about this book was the new information on Luke and on Kristen. Clifford found a way to make you feel sympathy for even the most vile evil badasses in her cannon. We also learn a lot about the third gang of Siders and who they work for, also what their motivations are.

A Touch Morbid is a fantastic sequel and I can’t wait to read the continuation of Eden and her ragtag group of miscreants. ( )

Not Recommended

Gabe, Az and Eden are back for the follow up book to A Touch Mortal. The book jumps right into continuing the story from the first book, so the story and characters are not introduced again. Readers will be lost if they have not read the first book. Eden is still coming to terms with being a Sider. She can suck the soul/life out of humans. People become Siders when they commit suicide. However, the story is playing out that Eden had help committing suicide and that maybe she should not have been a Sider. There are elements of Angels, the Devil, schizophrenia, and runaways, but it is all very confusing and was not clear to me where the story was heading. Towards the end of the story, Kirsten was on her way to giving Luke her soul in exchange for him helping her deal with mental issues and so she would not be lonely. The story ended with the death of another character and readers are left with a cliff hanger. Is the character who just died going to be a Sider?

I just felt like there were too many characters and story lines going on that I didn’t really understand where the story was going. I could see that it was supposed to be dark and there were elements of angels vs. the devil, but I almost gave up reading it. It had been a few months since I read the first book (which I did enjoy), but I should have reread it to understand the story development. However, I did not love the first book enough to reread it. As an avid reader, I normally do not have to reread books in a series to remember who the characters were and what was going on in the story.

Besides buying this for a school or public library collection, I don’t really have any ideas as to where else this book could be used. The cover art is great and would tempt students into picking it up. I would actually not even recommend buying this book for the school library unless you have the first one AND a student requests it. I would agree with the Kirkus review that states it’s “chaotic”. ( )

Review courtesy of Dark Faerie Tales.

Quick & Dirty: About a hundred pages shorter than A Touch Mortal, this sequel is a cliff-hanger with the same drawbacks as book one — but it does leave you excited for the final installment.

Opening Sentence: When the kitten broke out of the shadows in front of Gabe, he’d though it was a rat until he heard the pathetic mewling.

The Review:

Clifford takes a standard paranormal theme — Angels — and makes sure to run as far away from the stereotype as she can. Which is refreshing, but sometimes she missteps and makes you long to defenestrate this sequel. Eden, our heroine, goes through a lot in this novel and grows as a character. I still didn’t like her until the very end. (This happened in A Touch Mortal too, where I couldn’t get over her idiocy until the last 50 pages.) A Touch Mortal glamorized suicide and depression. A Touch Morbid didn’t do much better, condemning the suicide victims to hell. Even the ones that Eden killed with her Touch. You could say I’m not a happy camper with the way Clifford’s world-building holds up.

Gabe has fallen. Az is….almost falling. Kristen’s schizophrenia is back, and he’s not around to help her. Luke is bent on revenge and Madeline tugs at your heartstrings with her flavor of crazy. Jarrod is loyal to the end (I love him!) and Eden has stopped killing Siders. The cast of characters is way too big. I wish Clifford had made Madeline and Luke the main heroine/hero, because I loved to hate them (and loved to love them) and their relationship. I was much more invested in them than in anything Eden and Az did.

As it is we see a shift in the group dynamics. Jarrod points out all the changes in Eden the reader fails to notice from her point of view. Luke turns out not to be such a bad guy, which makes our gang of heroes seem really self-serving, and I liked him a lot. There are a lot more hot scenes in this novel, and it grows darker as the characters develop and grow.

Free will and choice come into play much more in A Touch Morbid than in the first book, but it felt like Clifford was rooting for Fate. It felt like every time a character had a choice, they either screwed up or made the bad call. The characters keep secrets from each other, just like in A Touch Mortal, and they never learned. Her writing is excellent, with some snarky wit that made me laugh and lighten the mood, but it wasn’t enough to make me like the novel. And the cliffhanger at the end? Lord, is that a rough way to leave an audience!

This book felt more balanced than its prequel in a lot of ways — probably because we got out of Eden and Az’s heads more and into characters I actually liked — but the problems from the first book persist. (And will probably continue throughout the series.) I just can’t bring myself to like or recommend a novel where suicide is whatever. On the other hand, this novel doesn’t make me go ragey – rage the way the first one does, so that’s something. I doubt I’ll be picking up A Touch Menacing, even though I think it’ll deliver the heartbreak and angst I love in my YAs.

Notable Scene:

“Eden, what the fuck is going on?” Jarrod demanded.

She trembled, Az’s tremors running through her. “The Bound,” she managed.

Jarrod’s mouth dropped open. They’d been a threat, but a nightmare one. Distant. “You saw them? Is he hurt?”

Az’s legs went out. He slammed his hands over his ears, his fingers digging into the sides of his head as he dropped to his knees, rolled over onto his side.

“No, Az!” Eden dropped, grabbed Az’s fingers and pried them away. “He’s Falling.”

FTC Advisory: Greenwillow Books/Harper Collins provided me with a copy of A Touch Morbid. No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review. ( )

A Touch Morbid is as dark and sexy as A Touch Mortal promised it to be. Eden gets a new look with green replacing the pink highlight and her new pixie-ish haircut, and Az is back in her life. However, they have both suffered heavy losses in their face-off against Luke. They need each other more than ever now in these uncertain times.

One big difference from book one is that there aren't time skips. The second is that Jarrod and Kristen have become narrators as well. Jarrod's relationship with a mortal brings another important character into the story while Kristen's narrative opens us to another side of a key character. Jarrod's perspective becomes crucial in pointing out changes in Eden that we wouldn't pay attention to otherwise, and it allows us to see the changing dynamics in the group's functions with Adam and Libby out of the picture.

As I mentioned earlier, there is more dark and sexy in this book. Leah further develops character relationships. Prepare yourself for hot scenes, sweet scenes, and some surprising reveals. I found myself falling in love and/or sympathizing with characters that I wanted to hate, and I fell deeper in love with characters that I liked from book one.

Eden forms new alliances, and she faces old friends in new lights. As Eden learns more about Siders, she faces new, dangerous threats that may potentially bring about her downfall. I eagerly anticipate book three in Leah Clifford A Touch trilogy! ( )