Review: 4.5 stars - Promising world and enjoyable enemies to lover romance
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 4, 2014
When Ranger Abby's captain sends her on a solo mission, her world view will shift as she crosses paths with a Reaper who has gained control of his inner parasite - so Jake is not your typical Reaper. And as Abby joins Jake to save scientists who are on the verge of discovering a cure for Reaperism, Abby learns that humans can be as monstrous as the monsters - and enemies can be friends and more.I feel like Reader's Touch has only scratched the surface of Eleri Stone's Reaper world, a world which has left the wealthy living in mountain cities while the rest scrape out a living in the lowlands in perpetual danger from violent mindless flesh eating Reapers and the threat of turning Reaper themselves. Abby is a Ranger, one of a few rare humans immune to the reapers' bite, and a rare female Ranger whose only choices in life are to fight Reapers or to devote her life to breeding more Rangers.I generally am not fond of zombie romances, but Reapers are not the typical shambling decomposing zombies - they are more on the order of possessed- so this wasn't one of those stories . I really liked both leads. Abby is a warrior but a life with limited choices hasn't hardened her heart.  I really like Jake, I am a fan of honorable controlled heroes who struggle with being unworthy of their heroines- having read a couple of this author's books I can say that she does a good job with conflicted nice guy heroes. I also really like enemies to lovers stories and author Stone does a good job of building the relationship - and the sensual tension -between the pair. And by holding off the romantic payoff, there was time to build the world and the story around them.So I really enjoyed Reaper's Touch and while this would work as a standalone, I am interested in reading more from this alternate Old West-y  world with just a hint of steampunk.