Review: mystery, detective work, fate and faith with great characters
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 10 24, 2011
What Niffeneger did for time travel in Time Traveler's Wife, Christine Amsden does for fortune-telling in her novel, Touch of Fate. Imagining a world where people really can see glimpses of the future, Touch of Fate explores what might happen if they were just ordinary people, from all sorts of walks of life. But prediction brings questions not just of predictability, but also immutability. What if the future they see really can't be changed?Marianne would love to change her prediction of the death of a daughter's friend. Marianne's daughter would kind of like that too. But death is death, and as both their lives fall apart, Marianne finds herself drawn to start a new life in St. Louis--drawn by fate? Drawn by the touch of fate perhaps? Soon she finds she's not alone in her strange life, but when one of her new friends witnesses a murder, and her daughter get in trouble for announcing predictions in unlikely places, Marianne might wish she were alone. Luckily there are open-minded people who just might try to believe her, and Marianne's journey to acceptance includes accepting herself and others.A novel that combines mystery, detective work, lives gone wrong and lives beginning to go right, with well-drawn touches of both fate and faith, this really is an intriguing and enjoyable read.Disclosure: I received a free ecopy of this book from the author in exchange for my honest review.