Touched

Ya never know what your gonna get. Touched is one of those books you think about at work...because you want to get home and finish it. I love it when Southern authors can make you feel the heat and humidity with their words; parts of this book reminded me of To Kill a Mockingbird (because of the place descriptions and the weather.)This is actually a quick read but you find yourself slowing down to savor the story. A five star book through and through!

This book is different than the Carolyn Haines mysteries I have read, and is just as enjoyable. Touched is written in beautiful language, and I felt as if I were right there in the thick Mississippi summer heat, felt the heavy air just before a thunderstorm would hit. She knows how to weave a story so that you just want to keep on going. I am glad I stumbled across this author and her books!

Carolyn Haines' descriptions are so vivid and powerful that I felt I was walking on the road or actually sitting in the room with her characters. There were times the hairs on my arms just stood up or my heart was breaking with them. If Carolyn Haines was attempting to reveal the narrow mindness of people in small towns of the South, my opinion is She Nailed It. If she was trying to awaken compassion in her readers She Nailed It. Her characters took my heart. I am having flashbacks of times in her story and I am in the exact same spot with them I was while reading the book. I would recommend this as a wonderful read. It hurts but it certainly makes one think. I am so glad I read it. I believe it awakened a compassion in me which will remain a lifetime.

Through Ms. Haines' descriptive powers, you can literally feel the heat of 1920's rural Mississippi in this exquisitely suspenseful tale. Racial tension and small-town suspicion simmer beneath supernatural overtones that hang over the tale like the humidity of the deep south. This story is told from a feminie viewpoint, and I've walked the landscape of Carol Haines'"Jexville" through the memories of my own mother on many occassions. Born in southern Mississippi and raised in the deep south by a woman who lived that time and place, I found humour, insight, compassion, and courage in the characters, and a reality that is perhaps more palatable when wrapped in the threads of mystery and the supernatural.I loved it!

Touched is one of the most amazing books I have ever read! From the first page of this book I was drawn into Haines' mysterious, twisted Southern town of Jexville. A constant sense of tension pervades as the story unfolds, petal by petal, and the pages literally begin to turn themselves. The characters are wonderful, endearing people, and the intense relationships they share with one another are multi-dimensional. The twists and turns of the plot would cause me to freak out, then cry, then laugh, all in one chapter. This story gets under your skin in a way that will have you thinking about the characters while you are away from your book. I enjoyed Haines' other book, Summer of the Redeemers, but I thought that Touched was even better. In one word, "intense" best describes Touched. It has been three days since I finished reading it, and the world of Jexville is still in the forefront of my thoughts.