Deadly Little Secret is the classic story of girl gets saved by boy, girl falls for boy, but boy has mysterious secret. Stop me if you've heard this one. Chapters about Camelia, the girl in question, are occasionally interrupted by chapters narrated by her stalker, who is clearly deranged. I liked the book much better when I realized that the boy in question, Ben, wasn't the deranged stalked. The world really only needs one Edward Cullen.
The Touch series does retread a lot of ground other Young Adult series have gone over before. A part of me also feels that the author used some form of random plot generator to come up with elements such as "quirky, horny, fashion designer friend," "platonic, fashion-challenged boy friend," and "vegan, new age mother." To be fair, the characters weren't as annoying as they could have been.
It's kind of funny that in the end, Ben's secret isn't even all that exciting. Basically, he touches things or people and can see the future or past of the object or person. It's called psychometry. I don't see why it's a big secret. The situation where his ex-girlfriend fell off the cliff seems like the juicier secret. I also don't really understand his appeal. Camelia is always talking about how good he looks, but beyond that he doesn't seem to do much of anything, except get psychic visions and trigger the bad boy/town pariah signals in Camelia's brain.
I'm being a little harsh on the book. It wasn't all that bad, and I'm almost half-way through the second book (Two words: Psychic sculptures!). Perhaps if I never read Twilight and its ilk, Deadly Little Secret wouldn't suffer from so much comparison. I thought it would be predictable, but the stalker was only my second choice as suspect. Ultimately, it was a quick and painless read.
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