Close Enough To Touch by Colleen Oakley

Close Enough To Touch starts off very promisingly with a certain strand of dark humour which, considering the subject matter, you would very much need to cope with an allergy to rest of humanity.  To some extent we all have a figurative allergy to people but Jubilee Jenkins has a literal allergy to the human race and has become am agoraphobic recluse as a result and who can blame her?

I didn't really enjoy this book as much as I thought I would.  There is a glossed over plot hole early in the story and it niggled at me so much I simply could not get past it for the rest of the book.  Without giving too much away (I hope) Jubilee has been living as a recluse for 9 years never once leaving her home for 9 years and then in a matter of weeks she manages to not only leave her house but she regularly cycles to her new job in a customer facing service role.

I also found Jubilee to be quite an unlikeable character but this is no bad thing.  How could someone who cannot even touch another person without potentially dieing have the social niceties or be able to even relate to other people? For me her self-absorption and need for a "connection" which can border on pathetic sometimes rings true for this character; however unlikeable it makes her.

The secondary characters of Eric and Aja and are well written and well fleshed out characters.  I really enjoyed the segments of the book dealing with the adopted son and his new dad.  Their struggles to adapt to the loss of not only Aja's parents but the breakdown of Eric's marriage and his struggles to reconnect with his teenage daughter are poignant and genuinely funny in places.

Close Enough To Touch is a decent enough book but schmaltzy in places and only really spoilt by what I perceived to be an early plot hole.  It is definitely of that category that I always think of as "literary self help" and one that I generally enjoy.  I didn't feel I'd wasted the day it took me to read the book and if this is a genre you have enjoyed in the past then you would find this a worthwhile read.

**Review originally published August 9th, 2017**