My 2021 reading goal is to read 12 books, and so far I have completed three. My latest? A Touch of Death by Rebecca Crunden.

When Crunden reached out, asking to send me the first book in The Outlands Pentalogy, I was a bit nervous – I don’t have much experience reading dystopian novels. However, another one of my reading goals this year is to broaden my literary horizons. So, I wanted to give this book a shot.

I was absolutely blown away.

Reading A Touch of Death was as vivid as watching a movie or experiencing a dream.

This made it incredibly easy to feel attached and connected to the main characters – Kitty and Nate. Both of whom had incredible character progression throughout the book.

At the start of the novel, Kitty (Catherine) is soft, care-free, and someone who accepts things as they are. As A Touch of Death progress, readers get to watch her turn into a fierce female character who challenges people and protects the ones she loves. Nate on the other hand starts as someone who is rough around the edges. At first, it was difficult to gauge whether I should like his character or not. Nonetheless, the further I got into the book the more I felt myself really warming up to Nate as his true kind-natured personality came through.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves dystopian worlds (and is looking to escape the world we currently live in for a little while).

I am itching to find out what happens next.

From the back of the book:

A thousand years in the future, the last of humanity live inside the walls of the totalitarian Kingdom of Cutta. The rich live in Anais, the capital city of Cutta, sheltered from the famine and disease which ravage the rest of the Kingdom. Yet riches and power only go so far, and even Anaitians can be executed. It is only by the will of the King that Nate Anteros, son of the King’s favourite, is spared from the gallows after openly dissenting. But when he’s released from prison, Nate disappears.

A stark contrast, Catherine Taenia has spent her entire life comfortable and content. The daughter of the King’s Hangman and in love with Thom, Nate’s younger brother, her life has always been easy, ordered and comfortable. That is, where it doesn’t concern Nate. His actions sullied not only his future, but theirs. And unlike Thom, Catherine has never forgiven him.

Two years pass without a word, and then one night Nate returns. But things with Nate are never simple, and when one wrong move turns their lives upside down, the only thing left to do is run where the King’s guards cannot find them – the Outlands. Those wild, untamed lands which stretch around the great walls of the Kingdom, filled with mutants and rabids.

Rating: 4/5 

Book cover is courtesy of Goodreads.

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