Touch Me Not

by Apryl Baker

I took a little longer to get into this than I had wanted but I gave it the benefit of the doubt and kept reading and I am glad that I did because the book definitely got better as the story took shape.

Nikoli is shameless, completely self-absorbed and with little respect for women and I think that is what my initial problem was – he was exactly what the author had implied – a manwhore. I got the whole man around campus, doing what he wanted when he wanted but I didn’t like the trail of broken hearts that he appeared to happily leave behind him.

Lily on the other hand is perfectly well aware of Nikoli and the train of devastation that follows in his wake. So when he tries his luck with her, she isn’t backward at letting him know that she is not interested.

Getting to Lily is not going to be straight forward as this sassy little madam is what can only be described as the sweetheart of the entire football team, well she would be when she is helping them to keep their grades up. So she has as muscly force field around her and Nikoli needs to tread very carefully or their will be a line of guys who are more than willing to hand him his ass on a plate!

But he is a persistent little beggar, so when he proposes, one date and he will be out of her hair for good, she is willing to get it over and done with… what is the worst that can happen?

Well, apparently a whole lot can happen on just that one date and a fragile deal is stuck between the most unlikely of couples.

There is more to the characters than initially laid out by the author and she is very clever, slowly drip-feeding the reader their innermost secrets little by little.

Lily is completely in love with her best friend Adam but she unfortunately has a crippling phobia of being touched, so any form of physical contact no matter how much her heart might be screaming out for it, is genuinely impossible. The details of why she is the way she is, is eventually revealed and I cried for her, it was so sad but she made up for this in other ways and she was a feisty little thing with a zest for life that she really hoped to be able to fulfil.

Nikoli is a dominant man, he is forceful and strong but he shows a different side of himself to Lily, he was more than he had originally come across, he gave his time to Lily, he was more patient and understanding and I couldn’t help but turn a corner with him, he won me over and I loved the peek under the surface of this sexy Russian.

They can both get what they need from the deal that they struck but what they want and what they get isn’t always going to be the same thing.

It was a good read, the character development was fabulous and it was a clever twist on the usual manwhore scenario.

Hope that there is another book soon