Anna Marie's skin is dangerous to touch. She accidentally put her boyfriend in a coma that he hasn't woken up from and probably never will, which is why she ran away from home. To protect people from her deadly touch, Anna Marie dresses to cover up all of her skin except her face. But this makes it difficult to hold down a job. Then she meets James, a guy she feels drawn to who is on the run from his family. The two of them go on the run together. Anna Marie has finally found someone she feels she can trust, but she might have to learn to use her powers if she wants to keep them safe.

 

The  thing that prevented me from enjoying this book is the very thing that made me pick it up in the first place—I'm a big fan of Rogue and have been since I was little. From the moment I discovered her, she was my favorite X-Men, so I was excited to read this book. But the character of this book just never felt like Rogue. Her personality felt completely off, and most of her past was different. The Rogue of this book wasn't raised by Mystique and Destiny after running away from home. She gets her name from the new character, James, or rather Touch, instead of getting it from the fact that she ran away at a young age. This Rogue just didn't feel like Rogue.

 

Rogue Touch didn't even feel like a book about Rogue. It felt like a book about Touch with Rogue along for the ride. The plot revolved around him. Everything was about learning about his past. I felt nothing between him and Rogue who felt immediately drawn to him. I didn't pick up the book for Touch. I don't care about Touch.

And then it gets even better when it's revealed that Touch had been lying to her the whole time and had been planning to use her as a weapon so he and his family could rule the world in the future. Revealing that the love interest was lying to and using her the whole time does nothing to endear him to me. It doesn't matter to me if his love for her suddenly made him change his mind about the entire plan because I never cared about their romance to begin with.

(spoiler show)

So yeah, I felt nothing for Touch.

 

The writing of the book wasn't bad. I probably would have enjoyed this more if I knew nothing about Rogue going in or if the book hadn't been about her in the first place. Unfortunately, neither of those is true.

My Rating – 2 Stars

*I received a digital copy of this novel from Netgalley on behalf of Hyperion*

Anna Marie is a good southern girl, who only wants to kiss her friend Cody. If you are at all familiar with the character of Rogue, you know that doesn’t turn out well. Her kiss puts Cody in a coma and Anna Marie discovers that her skin sucks the life out of people. (She experiments on a kitten, which, for the record is a big strike mark in my personal book. I can’t stand animals getting hurt in books/tv/movies, etc.)

So now Anna Marie is on the run. She’s working odd jobs and living off food stamps (which, ok the author got the “new food stamp” name correct but not that they don’t actually use stamps anymore. That’s a small thing I know I know but it’s something that stuck in my mind).

Anyway, she is followed by a mysterious (handsome of course) stranger, James (a.k.a. Touch). He’s dressed up like it’s the middle of a Canadian winter when it’s August in Mississippi. He doesn’t understand simple things, like buying food or how air conditioners work.

When Anna Marie is fired from her job, she gets desperate and breaks into the bakery late one night to take some food. Her ex-boss happens to catch her in the act and touches Anna Marie. Now she has to run again because has she robbed the bakery she put her boss in a coma.

Touch just happens to be rolling by and they escape together, traveling through the country, stealing what they need to survive. Touch dubs Anna Marie as “Rogue” and the romance beings. But Rogue soon learns that not only is she running from the law, Touch is running from something as well. Something possibly not of this world.

Here’s my biggest issue with this book; it has absolutely nothing to do with X-Men. I love Rogue; she is one of my favorite X-Men. The book even got her back story right, up until the part where she runs away. The X-Men aren’t even mentioned. Ok, I get it. They want to appeal to a new audience, draw in a different kind of fan. But I didn’t like it. I feel like there should be something to do with the X-Men in there. (Not even Wolverine. Wolverine is like in every Marvel creation. He’s an Avenger at one point. WOLVERINE.)

Also, I put the book down several times because I lost interest. Most of the book is just description of their travels and how she’s falling in love with Touch but she can’t touch him. “We drove here and ate this and slept here and talked about this but Touch is avoiding so all the talking is really one-sided and I want to touch him and kiss him and bang his brains out but I can’t and I miss Cody.” That’s really the entire middle of the book. Over and over in every chapter.

And the plot/climax/Touch’s origin is kinda like “huh?”

The good thing though, is Rogue is still a pretty awesome character. She kicks some redneck’s ass, fights for what she loves, and she learns how to use some of the powers she absorbs.

If you are new to Marvel characters, you’ll probably like this. However if you are a comic book fan, you are probably not going to like this book.

Read this review and others at Punk's House of Books

There are some things you may not know about me.

I’m a dork.

A big one.

I want to go to comic conventions. I want to dress up. The full enchilada. Make-up. Hair. Costume.

My favorite character is NOT Superman. (I rather dislike Superman actually).

I collect comic books.

X-Men to be more exact. :)

 

Which led to my interest of this book. Rogue Touch. Rogue is one of my favorite female comic characters and I couldn’t help the fascination that bubbled beneath my surface when I heard Marvel was teaming up to put out a novel about her character. I had a lot of issues though.

 

Mainly, this book read like a giant fan-fiction love-story to me more than anything. Maybe I shouldn’t have went into it with so much enthusiasm, but I did. If you’re expecting to go into Rogue Touch and see the X-Men Universe and many of your favorite mutants, you will not get that. Is this to say that it was a bad read? No, not really. The action sequences were well done and I was kept on the edge of my seat the majority of the read. I did enjoy reading about an early life of Rogue before X-Men, but I didn’t enjoy how her character seemed to be portrayed most of the time as I was reading.

 

For her being one of my favorite comic characters, I almost disliked her A LOT in this book. But mostly, I just disliked the over-abundance of romance, when I just wanted the story… the action. The descriptions were thorough enough for me to easily visualize everything, making scenes come across as cinematic. I liked that very much. The author gave me enough oomph to power through, even in times of annoyance. So that’s a bonus.

 

This was an easy and entertaining read. Personally, I would love to see more comic-book characters have novels like this.

Source: Hyperion/Netgalley – I received this book in exchange for an honest review. I received no compensation.
Publisher: Hyperion
Series: -
Edition: Egalley, 288 pages
Genre: Science Fiction
Purchase:  Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Book Depository *
*I receive a small monetary kickback from Amazon purchases
Rating: 4/5

 

It’s finally happening! Comic books are getting actual novels! (I’m excluding the movie based novels of course). I saw this on Netgalley and practically attacked my mouse trying to request it. I will admit to having certain expectations heading into it, because I do know some of Rogue’s story and I was expecting to see more of the Marvelverse. However Rogue Touch takes us in the the part of Rogue’s origin that we never got to see, that time between her first experience with her powers and the time she meets up with other ‘mutants’. I was pleasantly surprised by what Rogue Touch delivered.

 

Anna Marie was a normal girl until she kissed her boyfriend and her latent powers awakened, sending him to the hospital and driving Anna Marie to run away. She’s a young woman afraid of her own skin, literally, and she goes to extremes to prevent the same thing from happening to anyone else. She dresses in leather and keeps herself covered, she avoids people as much as possible and it really forces her into a lonely place. I really loved Anna’s personal journey in this one, she goes from being someone who hides who she is because of fear to someone who is stronger and more confident. James (Touch) was totally unexpected and I really liked his role in bringing out Anna’s more confident nature. I do wish that I knew more about him and his home though, we do get to see and hear about it but I think I wanted some more details.

 

The overall story is not something you can find in graphic novels (or at least not yet) so it’s fresh and new. We get a in depth and emotional look at what Anna has to go through when she absorbs another person’s “power”. We get to see her visit some of the memories she gains from other people in comics but I think the book touches on just how much of that becomes Anna. Suddenly another persons’ experiences are now hers, and I really felt for her because I couldn’t even begin to imagine what it would like to live with someone’s life going through my mind. I also like the twists that Anna encounters and most of my guesses were kind of off base.

 

Overall I think that this was the perfect book to kick off the Marvel books. It’s an easy read with the familiar nature of Marvel and the added depth of a full length novel.  I had some slight issues with the lack of detail where Touch was concerned but I really liked Rogue’s voice. I can’t wait to see what Hyperion and Marvel do next!

In a word this book is insulting.

Rogue is an iconic figure to those of us who grew up with her and so I know it would be close to impossible to please a long time X-Men fan like myself, but comic book fans are notorious for being hard to please, so Woodward should have seen this coming and not so completely ruined what made Rogue's youth so compelling.

Not only are there no X-Men, Roque also doesn't have her adopted mothers Mystique and Destiny. Even if you didn't want to make this a "superhero" universe (which is ridiculous, all things considered) you could have at least given the fan's a long-awaited peek into their home life, or was it that this is a young adult book and you don't want children to read about lesbian mothers?

Like most other people, I was upset that instead of Gambit being the romantic interest it some original character, but the worst thing about this book is that he becomes the story. Not just their romance, but the whole plot is based around him.

Rogue is an unbelievably strong and independent woman and you make her book about some guy we don't care about and have never heard of?

It is not impossible for a story to be about a woman and not completely dependent on a man to advance the plot, even in the romance genre.

Unfortunately, Woodward is a good writer (when it comes to technique, at least) but this is just another piece of merchandise with as much substance as one of my Rogue action figures.