BLINK Summer Reading Blog Tour: #Review of A TOUCH OF GOLD by Annie Sullivan (w/ #Giveaway)!
Welcome to the BLINK Summer Reading Blog Tour, brought to you by the FFBC! This tour celebrates five amazing YA reads from BLINK and authors Annie Sullivan, McCall Hoyle, Christina June, Laurie Boyle Crompton, and Kwame Alexander and Mary Rand Hess. Today I’ve got all the details on Meet the Sky, the sophomore novel from McCall Hoyle, along with my review and an awesome giveaway. Let’s get started!
About the Book
title: A Touch of Gold (A Touch of Gold #1)
author: Annie Sullivan
publisher: BLINK
release date: 14 August 2018
King Midas once had the ability to turn all he touched into gold. But after his gift—or curse—almost killed his daughter, Midas relinquished The Touch forever. Ten years later, Princess Kora still bears the consequences of her father’s wish: her skin shines golden, rumors follow her everywhere she goes, and she harbors secret powers that are getting harder to hide.
Kora spends her days locked in the palace, concealed behind gloves and veils, trying to ignore the stares and gossip of courtiers. It isn’t until a charming young duke arrives that Kora realizes there may be someone out there who doesn’t fear her or her curse. But their courtship is disrupted when a thief steals precious items from the kingdom, leaving the treasury depleted and King Midas vulnerable. Thanks to her unique ability to sense gold, Kora is the only one who can track the thief down. As she sails off on her quest, Kora learns that not everything is what it seems—not thieves, not pirates, and not even curses. She quickly discovers that gold—and the power it brings—is more dangerous than she’d ever believed.
Midas learned his lesson at a price. What will Kora’s journey cost?
Add to Goodreads: A Touch of Gold
Purchase the Book: Amazon | B&N | TBD | Indiebound
About the Author
Annie Sullivan is a Young Adult author from Indianapolis, Indiana. Her work has been featured in Curly Red Stories and Punchnels. She loves fairytales, everything Jane Austen, and traveling and exploring new cultures. When she’s not off on her own adventures, she’s teaching classes at the Indiana Writers Center and working as the Copy Specialist at John Wiley and Sons, Inc. publishing company, having also worked there in Editorial and Publicity roles.
Connect with Annie: Twitter | Instagram
My 4-Star Review
The thing I love most of all about A Touch of Gold is how unique the idea behind it is – King Midas had a daughter and passed on his curse to her? What a great idea! It’s so creative and leaves so much room for inventive storytelling. Kora has not just inherited her father’s ability to turn any object she touches into gold, she is in fact “golden” herself; therefore, she’s been largely hidden away from the kingdom in the palace, behind veils and clothes that fully cover her skin. Her father is ailing, reduced to spending more and more time each day with the remaining objects he turned to gold. When her beloved uncle brings suitors to the palace in hopes of finding a husband for Kora, she is surprised to be taken with a handsome young duke who seems to know exactly what she’s going through. At the same time, a thief absconds with the gold objects that are keeping her father alive. Since Kora has an ability to sense the gold, she sets off with the duke to retrieve the objects and save her father’s life. She soon finds, however, that everything is not as it appears – friend may be foe, a curse may be a blessing, someone who claims they want to help her may in fact want to hurt her. Will she be strong enough to survive possible treachery and her hated curse, and save her father and the kingdom?
As I said, I love the idea behind this story, and Ms. Sullivan has given us a heroine to root for in Kora. The secondary characters also leap off the page, with Kora’s cousin Hettie being a particular favorite of mine. It was fun to follow along with Kora and the ragtag crew as they sail off to find her father’s gold objects, encountering dreadful pirates, mythological creatures, and foes aplenty along the way. Kora grows from a sheltered girl who is afraid of her curse to a brave young woman who may even come to embrace her unique power. I really enjoyed this book and it sounds like we’ll be getting another installment of Kora’s adventures, which I can’t wait to read!
Rating: 4 stars!
About the Giveaway
There are five (5) BLINK Summer Reading Tour book bundles up for grabs, each of which includes the five books featured in the tour: A Touch of Gold by Annie Sullivan, Meet the Sky by McCall Hoyle, No Place Like Here by Christina June, Pretty In Punxsutawney by Laurie Boyle Crompton, and Swing by Kwame Alexander and Mary Rand Hess! This one is US only and ends 8 August 2019. Enter via the Rafflecopter below, and good luck!
