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Thanks to NetGalley and Entangled Teen Crave for providing an ebook in exchange for an honest review.

236 Pages

Synopsis: Aster Layne believes in physics, not psychics. A tarot card reading on the Ocean City Boardwalk should have been a ridiculous, just-for-fun thing. It wasn’t. Aster discovers she has a very unscientific gift–with a simple touch of the cards, she can change a person’s fate.

Reese Van Buren is cursed. Like the old-school, centuries-old curse that runs in royal families. Every firstborn son is doomed to die on his eighteenth birthday–and Reese’s is coming up fast. Bummer. He tries to distract himself from his inevitable death…only to find the one person who can save him. 

Aster doesn’t know that the hot Dutch guy she’s just met needs her help–or that he’s about to die.

But worst of all…she doesn’t know that her gift comes with dark, dark consequences that can harm everyone she loves.

Touching Fate is a quick but enjoyable read that is also a very original twist on the power of tarot cards. I loved the story itself which combined tarot card reading with the Fates. You see, Aster Layne is a Fate Changer, which means she can change someone’s fate simply by touching a card in her deck. However, there’s also some repercussions from doing this which forces Aster to make some difficult decisions, including whether or not she can save Reese. The story alternates in the third person voices of Aster and Reese. I had a little bit of a hard time connecting to Aster at first because I felt her nastiness to Reese when they first met unwarranted. As this is a fairly short story, that didn’t last long, and I appreciated what she was going through. She loves pretty much unconditionally and will do anything to protect the people in her life. Reese is charming from the very first scene, and once he discovers Aster could lift the curse and save his life, he faces his own moral dilemma. While they fall in love fairly quickly, the secrets they keep from each other threaten to tear them apart…permanently. The secondary characters are equally engaging and each has a role that further fleshes out the story. My only complaint is that I felt the book could have been longer. Because it was only a little over 200 pages, everything unfolded a little too quickly. It was almost akin to a really fast roller-coaster ride. You feel like you just got on when the ride’s already over. The plot unfolds over the course of a year, but because of the shortness of the book, it really doesn’t feel like it. I also thought the relationship between Aster and Reese, although sweet and romantic, could have used a little extra time to develop more fully. But overall, I really enjoyed this, and I’m looking forward to reading the sequel Cursing Fate which is coming out later this month. I definitely recommend this for older teens who like paranormal romance.