Colleen Oakley's second book, Close Enough to Touch, follows two characters who are clearly destined for a life-altering romance.
CLOSE ENOUGH TO TOUCH
Colleen Oakley
Allen and Unwin
By FEBY IDRUS
In the vein of heartfelt tear-jerkers like The Notebook and P.S. I Love You, Colleen Oakley's second book, Close Enough to Touch, follows two characters who are clearly destined for a life-altering romance.
As they say, though, the course of true love never did run smooth, and it doesn't for main characters Jubilee and Eric. In this version of the contemporary romance formula, however, it's because they cannot touch because Jubilee is literally allergic to people.
How do you write a compelling romance without having the characters touch, seeing as the touch of one character could kill the other? It's an interesting problem that Oakley manages to overcome and work with nicely.
The longing looks, breathless moments and intimate conversations are all familiar from other novels in the genre but, if anything, the impossibility of physical contact made it more intense.
What's more, after a nearly fatal incident at high school, Jubilee has put herself under self-imposed house arrest for the past nine years, and her resulting agoraphobia and fear adds another layer to her character and to her relationship with Eric.
I felt for this socially awkward, somewhat prickly woman, trying to battle past her own barriers. Eric, though a less interesting character than Jubilee, has his own problems for us to empathise with: an estranged teenage daughter and a very complicated adopted son.
Oakley clearly knows this genre well and navigates its expectations with ease, while still keeping things fresh. She's written some interesting characters here, as well as an ending which pleasantly surprised me. Not out to reinvent the wheel or deliver something deep and meaningful, Oakley just wants to give her readers the same gentle feel-good dose of romance they will have encountered in her first book, Before I Go.
And she delivers.
If you're an aficionado of contemporary romance, you'll probably find Close Enough to Touch a nice addition to your bookshelf.
Feby Idrus is a writer, musician, and arts administrator in Wellington.
