Untouchable is the story of an escort, Stella. I picked this book up because the blurb caught the attention of the part of me that is really into thriller/suspense type romance. I was hesitant about the escort aspect but I was hopeful that it wouldn’t overshadow the potential of the plot. I might have been too hopeful.
I would not at all call this book a romance. If you know me, you know I need a side of romance with my freaky deaky crazy suspense or whatever else a book may have to offer. Without the ooey gooey love stuff, Momma is not happy, I’m like…well me, without coffee before 10am. What wound up taking a lot of the potential enjoyment out of this book for me was the lack of love. A lot of the story is just Stella’s life as a prostitute. She bangs random men, she tries to figure out how to describe that activity on her taxes and bangs more random men. I think we are supposed to identify with Stella’s pain because the reasons for her choice to be a prostitute are pretty tragic. It didn’t happen for me that way. I just could not identify with Stella. I felt bad for her character when I wasn’t repulsed by it but I couldn’t connect to her at all.
There is a DP scene that is particularly disturbing. Everyone is going to have their own opinions about this sort of thing, all I can give you is mine. I just have a really hard time dealing with a heroine who has had a d!ck in every entrance and exit, at the same time, before I get to the 50% point of the book. Beyond that personal bias, the plot just doesn’t live up to the hype. I thought one of Stella’s good friends got killed in the book…because that’s what the blurb states. In reality, the person who gets killed is someone Stella barely knows outside of paid orgies where Stella performs her DP tricks. I mean just aaaaaaack. The other thing is that this book was supposed to be a thriller but I didn’t walk away feeling like I had been thrilled. A lot of the book is kind of slow. You wouldn’t think the life of a prostitute could be so…mundane. But the way it’s described in this book is really ho hum….or hoe hum…ok, enough of that. When the book isn’t slow it’s kind of depressing. For me, Stella was just a really sad character. It just wasn’t fun for me to read about her.
Ok for my rating I went with 3 stars. That’s because the book itself is well written. The plot is set out in a clear and coherent fashion and the author tackles a taboo subject matter with relative grace. This definitely was not the book for me but I wouldn’t go as far as to say that I couldn’t see some readers enjoying this story. Just know that if you’re a romance junkie, you’re going to have to get your fix somewhere else.
**ARC provided by Publisher**
