Touching Smoke (Touch Series #1) by Airicka Phoenix

Title:  Touching Smoke (Touch Series #1)
Author:  Airicka Phoenix
Publisher:  TreasureLine Publishing
Published:  July 31, 2012
 
Amazon | Smashwords | All Romance

My Rating:

For sixteen-year-old FALLON BRAEDEN, being on the run had always been a mystery, until the day she starts an earthquake and everything falls apart. Suddenly, she finds herself hunted by creatures with unusual abilities, haunted by a ghost baring a frighteningly familiar resemblance and falls in love with the last person she should ever give her heart to. So as her foundation crumbles beneath her, Fallon finds herself teetering on the brink of two devastating revelations: follow her heart or save the world.

After being on the run most of her life, but never knowing the reasons why, one might think finally getting those answers would bring Fallon peace, understanding, or, at the most, closure. But when pieces of the puzzle start falling into place, all those years of being kept in the dark may have been a blessed state of oblivion. Will being hunted and haunted and nursing a painful loss keep Fallon from trusting a complete stranger? Or will trusting him be the key to everything she’s been searching for?

Touching Smoke was a wonderful and unique story. Fallon is a great female lead and her inner monologue was so much fun to read: 

“I wasn’t Buffy, but Mom had taught me enough self-defense routines

 to make a grown man cry if I had to.”

There were many humorous moments in this book, but there were a lot of heartfelt and heartbreaking events as well. Fallon and her mother have a truly unique relationship. They’re very close in spite of having so many secrets between them. When Fallon’s mother makes the incredulous decision to enroll her at an upper crust academy in their new town so she can begin a new job… things start unraveling fast.

“Like any other town in the world, Rettop County had an elementary school, a high school and a community college, but it was also home to Lady Clare’s Academy, an exclusive boarding school for the very gifted and very rich — I was neither.”

Fortunately for Fallon, Isaiah shows up just as her world begins to crumble. But how can she be sure whose side Isaiah is really on? And why does she have such strong feelings for someone she’s not even supposed to know… yet she feels so sure that she does?

Isaiah is one of the reasons I would never do well in a run-for-your-life type of situation like this. I’m pretty sure any coherent thought I possessed would go out the window, never to be recovered, if my rescuer was anything like him:

“He was a walking symphony of predatory magnetism.

Every motion rippled with the prowess of a very large jungle cat,

all feral and mesmerizing.”

 

One of my favorite things about Fallon was the things that went through her mind at the most inopportune times (something I am guilty of on a daily basis).

“The night was actually kind of beautiful when we weren’t running for our lives.”

 

**********************************************************************

 

“Man, he had a nice voice. It was probably a bad time to notice, but it was true all the same. It was all low and husky, the kind that should have been reading poetry —

something deep and meaningful — in a smoky café.”

 

Touching smoke was filled with secrets, twists, and enough action to make one’s heart beat at accelerated levels! And speaking of making the heart beat faster:

“‘What am I?’ I whispered, my eyelids already drooping in the promises of sleep.

If at any point I doubted that he felt half of what I felt, he pressed his lips to my ear, and whispered,

‘Mine.

Always.’”

Airicka Phoenix has a vivacious style of writing that flows easily and captures the reader’s attention, making it hard to put her book down.

“And when I strained to hear the roar of traffic in the distance, the faint buzz of the florescent light just outside the door, twilight was all I really heard. It roared in my ears like the call of the ocean. It was such a normal sound, a haunting sound. I hated and loved it. I hated it because it always felt like something sinister was lurking just beyond the door. I hated it because I felt like I belonged on that side of the door with whatever was calling to me, but I loved it for that reason as well.”

 

I’m very excited that Touching Eternity, a novella in the Touch series, has an expected release date of December 20, 2012. There is an exciting Scavenger Hunt for the novella that you can find out about here:

　

Book two, Touching Fire, is expected July 31, 2013, and I can hardly wait to find out what happens next for Fallon and Isaiah.

Author Bio:
Airicka Phoenix is the author of TOUCHING SMOKE (Touch Series Book #1) and TORRID, a short story as part of the Whispered Beginnings: A Clever Fiction Anthology.

When she's not hammering away at the keyboard, she can be found banishing pirates or crawling through the attic looking for lost treasure with her kids. She loves baking, gardening and reading. She also likes to travel and take pictures of everything she comes across. When asked, Airicka describes herself as a sarcastic basket case that has an unhealthy addiction to chocolate, old movies and really bad jokes. She loves to laugh, make friends and write. If she could have one wish granted, it would be to spend one day as a fly-on-the-wall inside Stephen King's mind. If she could have two wishes granted, she would ask for a castle dedicated entirely to her overwhelming collection of books.

For more about Airicka, also on how to win giveaways, read author interviews and reviews, you can click here to visit her website.

You can add Airicka on any/all of her social networks. Making new friends is the highlight of her day! 

Twitter

Facebook

Goodreads

Website

 

A huge thank you to the author for graciously sending me a copy of Touching Smoke in exchange for my honest review.