Welcome to Blog Tour for Dark Touch by Aimee L. Salter hosted by the wonderful InkSlinger PR ❤
Check out my review on this really interesting YA novel, a little sneak peak and an amazing guest post 😀
Enjoy Your Visit Lovelies ❤
Tully isn’t alone in her skin. Whenever she touches someone, they feel everything she feels. All her ugliness. All her darkness. All her pain. The only thing she wants is to be left alone–and to finally get out of her small Oregon town.
But then she meets Chris. He’s everything she’s not: Light. Trusting. Innocent. And he wants Tully.
Tully knows she should spare him the heartache of being with her. But when he touches her, she’s not sure she’ll have the strength to push him away—until he learns about her dark past, and what really goes on in her ever decaying home.
From the author of Every Ugly Word comes a poignant, emotionally raw story about the violence that plays out behind closed doors and the all-consuming passion of first love
It’s been a while since I have actually read a really interesting YA book – somehow I haven’t actually been able to connect with YA characters for a long time – maybe because the whole “unique female, cocky male and circumstances that throw them together” – not really does it for me any more.
But somehow the blurb of this book interested me enough to ignore that it is a YA book (I know, I know, I am very bad.) But I had really high hopes for it and I am so glad that it actually gave it a chance.
Tully is an empath – for she gives off her feelings to anybody who touches her – a fact that has made her a freak in the town’s eyes. She has had a bad home life, trauma and a life that she believes she can escape only when she graudtaes and goes off with Nigel (her wreck of a car).
So when Chris comes to town and treats her like a normal human being, it becomes really hard for her to keep herself closed off from him – but Chris’s light and optimism makes sure that he thaws the frozen attitude that Tully has towards life and people in general.
But first love is always the riskiest and when life has thrown nothing but rocks at her, will Tully be able to move forward with an open heart?
Let me get this straight – this book is dark, and angst – ridden – so if you think even with this blurb, you’ll be getting a hearts and flowers kind of first love – you are mistaken. The level of angst n this book is high, for a YA novel.
Tully is a girl who is lost – a girl who has lost quite a bit, and is at the mercy of loosing so much more and it is hard not to feel for this girl – especially since this book is written in her POV . Everything she feels you feel – and damn if she doesn’t feel too much, yet the darkness she believes is inside of her has been restrained behind a thick wall, that definitely shouldn’t come down.
Chris doesn’t really play by any rules that she has set – he doesn’t listen to her words, but hears her plea anyway – he is the light to his dark and damn if the dark isn’t something that he is unafraid of.
The course of first love is never really smooth (which I think is because, it is felt by teenagers, and thus, those emotions are magnified!) but the course of Tully and Chris’s love is fraught by obstacles made by Tully herself and I loved the fact that the darkness isn’t metaphorical, the author has made sure that this darkness is actually seen through her actions, as in backed by tangible circumstances.
What I adored was the writing – a book that has a strong plot and flows smoothly with a powerful writing not only makes the author that I really want to read more from, but also an author I would really recommend to a fellow reader who is seeking something different from the YA genre.
A small issue I had with the book was with the way it ended abruptly – somehow that ending just left me wanting more – maybe an epilogue in Chris’s POV for I really wanted that and that would have just made this book a perfect read for me 😀
“This is it, Tully” he whispers. “This is our Always.”
“No one gets an Always,” I breathe. “No one can promise that.”
“Our something then. You’re my Something, and I’m yours. I promise. You have to trust me.”
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ .5
I think it’s because the first time Chris saw me, I wasn’t me. He saw someone who didn’t exist. And by the time he figured that out, he didn’t care anymore.
He should have cared.
He cares now.
In the half-light of my pitiful bulb, everything looks gray. Dust motes hang in the air. My narrow bed is unmade, sheets tangled. The quilt my mom stitched when I was two hangs half-way off the mattress, stretched toward the door like it too would flee this room if it could. The rest is bare—the drawers, the closet door, the walls. Even the clothes strewn across the chair and rug are plain and dirty.
Somehow it’s never bothered me before. But with Chris here it does.
His eyes are closed, his burnished lashes quivering because he’s screwed so tight. Everything’s shaking under the pressure. The muscles in his jaw twitch. His hand is white-knuckled. His shoulders . . . oh, Lord, help me, those shoulders that have lifted things I can’t carry and swept me along too . . . they’re hunched. Knotted. Pressed in on themselves. On him. There’s so much of him that I feel small, yet he’s the place where I can breathe.
At least, he was.
My insides are in freefall because I did this to him. I shouldn’t have that power over him. I shouldn’t have that power over anyone. But he gave it to me and refused to take it back.
“Chris?” I barely whisper, but he flinches like I screamed. “It wasn’t about—”
“Don’t.” It’s a hard syllable. A word bitten off. He doesn’t even open his eyes. “I swear, Tully, if you say one word . . .” His fist becomes a hammer.
I am ugly. I am black inside, rotting and putrid. I have told him this. Many times. But tonight, finally, he believes me. As he turns on his heel and stumbles out the door, I can’t even call after him. Because when he gave me the power to turn him inside out, I gave him mine. And even though I knew this day would come, knew he was wrong about me, somehow he gave me hope.
As I watch him stagger into the hallway and disappear, that hope begins its death throes. It doesn’t die quietly. It screams and curses and shoves at me. And for the first time ever, I am grateful for my life, for my father, and for this house.
Because if it’s taught me anything, it’s how to take a blow.
My Own Worst Enemy
By Tully Harden (main character in Dark Touch, by Aimee L. Salter)
People think my story before Chris walked into my life was sad because I was hurt. A lot.
It’s true, I carry scars—both those you can see, and those you can’t. But the truly sad part of my past is that I spent years hurting myself. I was pissed off, and frightened, and so freaking tired I had given up and accepted what happened to me. So whenever hate rose like bile in my throat (which was most of the time), I turned it on myself.
I am my own worst enemy.
My self-destruction might look different to yours, but we’re driven by the same loathing. I hurt myself because I hated what I was. What I became. I turned the anger in, because until I met Chris, I didn’t think I deserved forgiveness. Hell, I didn’t even think forgiveness existed. I threw myself under the bus because when the pain came, it fit. It felt right.
Chris didn’t save me from that—he couldn’t. But he showed me my own truth. Let me see where I believed lies. Assured me my life could be different. I will never love anyone more than him because what he showed me set me free.
So now it’s my turn to speak up. If you remember nothing else I’ve said, remember this:
Whatever you’ve been through, wherever you’re coming from, you don’t have to hurt to earn a smile.
Love is out there. Joy is possible. And there’s no penance to pay when you find it.
I hope you’ll read my story and see how I discovered this. I know my story can give you hope. Just be aware: I know how hot my boyfriend is. If you so much as look at him sideways, I’m still capable of slapping your teeth out of your face.
Just sayin’.
Aimee L. Salter is the author of the gut-wrenching Every Ugly Word, a gripping and emotional story about the devastating consequences of bullying, and Dark Touch, an equally raw story about the violence that plays out behind closed doors and the all-consuming passion of first love.
Aimee lives in Southern Oregon with her husband and son where she writes made-up stories that tell the truth about life. She never stopped appreciating those moments in the dark when you say what you’re really thinking. And she’ll always ask you about the things you wish she wouldn’t.
She blogs for both writers and readers, and you can also find her on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook:
Website | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter
For The Love of Fictional Worlds 