Both of us were really curious about A Touch of Gold by Annie Sullivan. After the chat in TBR & Beyond we both got to reading! What did we think of this King Midas retelling? Keep reading to find out!

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?

Cover

Candyce I am still in love with this cover! It’s so stunning! After reading the story I think I love it even more. Finally a cover that also really fits the story.

Isabelle This is such a cool cover! I think it really captures what the book is about and it looks wonderful. This is a book I would immediately pick up in a bookstore even when I wouldn’t have heard about it elsewhere.

Plot

Candyce A Touch of Gold is my first King Midas retelling and to be honest my first time even reading about this tale. I’ve heard of the King Midas story before, but I only knew a few details. That didn’t stop me from enjoying A Touch of Gold. I loved Annie’s writing style and I finished this book really fast.

A lot of this book takes place on a boat, but that didn’t make it less interesting. I loved this setting and how everything was described. Everything comes together eventually, but I think the author did this in an interesting way. There were a few things I saw coming, but there was definitely a plot twist I didn’t see coming! The pacing of this book is pretty good through the whole book, except for the ending. For me the ending felt a bit rushed.

The whole aspect of the gold calling to Kora and her being able to find where it’s located was really interesting. Her gift was interesting as well and to see it used was pretty cool. I haven’t read many books with pirates, but this one was really fun. A Touch of Gold is filled with adventure, betrayal, love, friendship and trying to find your place in a world you don’t know much about yet. Romance definitely plays a bigger role in this story, but it’s not too much. It develops really nicely.

I know there’s going to be a sequel, so I get the ending is still pretty open. I would’ve liked to have seen more of how a few things played out at the end. All in all, I really loved this story and can’t wait for the next book. Annie Sullivan is definitely an author to keep an eye on!

Isabelle I listened to the audiobook for this one and was so happy to find it on my subscription service. Same as Candyce, I had heard of the King Midas tale but don’t know that much about it. I was very excited for this retelling, it’s so much fun that we’re getting more diversity in the retellings. There are só many Beauty and the Beast retellings, and while I still love them, it’s nice to get some other ones as well. You don’t need to know anything about the original tale to enjoy this, and I can’t really say to much about the retelling part but for me is was done very nicely.

I loved Kora’s curse and gift and think that was the best part of the book. For me that was pretty unique and I really enjoyed reading about it. There were some really obvious ‘twists’ that we see way to much in YA but there were other things I really enjoyed. For example, I really liked the fight scenes! There was quite some action in the book and that made it pretty fast-paced. It was a fast book and I finished in about a day and a half!

There were a couple of romances in this story. I’m not the biggest romance person and didn’t like all of them. But some were pretty cute and enjoyable to read about. Especially one of the later ones was really cute and I enjoyed the development. It wasn’t the best romance I ever read about, but still okay.

“I’ve only ever turned one person to gold, and that was an accident.”

Characters

Candyce The characters in this book were a lot of fun. In the beginning I knew a few characters weren’t to be trusted. I was definitely right in a couple of cases. I was happy it played out this way, because the romance would’ve been too easy, but okay, I’m getting off track.

Kora has had a really isolated life. After everything her father did, she is paying the price. I would’ve jumped the chance to go on the boat to find my father’s gold as well, if it meant I finally got a little freedom. But because she grew up so isolated, she’s not really sure who to trust and learns this kind of the hard way in many aspects. She grew a lot in this story though and I can’t to see how these amazing changes help her along the next steps of this journey!

Kora’s cousin Hettie surprised me the most to be honest. At first she got on my nerves, because she is pretty spoiled. This changes pretty quickly on their journey. In the end Hettie learns to take care of herself and she becomes a very strong woman. I wouldn’t want to mess with her, that’s for sure. I loved how much she really supported Kora.

The crew on the boat is a fun bunch of characters who grew on me as the story progressed. I don’t want to give too much away, because a lot happens with these characters! They are definitely a fun bunch though!

 

Isabelle As Candyce said, I knew some of these characters weren’t trustworthy right away! It was so satisfying seeing the betrayals play out and be right about all of them.

Kora was an okay character to read about, when you read about her you can easily see where she is coming from and why she’s the way she is. She made some really dumb decisions and while they all felt logical, it was also a bit annoying haha. Kora did show development and I’d like to read more about her in the sequel.

Hettie was so much fun to read about and the only character I wasn’t completed sure about. For the longest I was going back and forth about her being trustworthy and I really liked how that played out in the end. I think Hettie showed the most development and she was my favorite character in this book!

I always like reading about the crew on a ship, even though a lot of the side characters are pretty generic ‘pirate characters’. Some of the more developed crew characters were very enjoyable to read about and they actually wiggled their way in to my heart!

Candyce:

Isabelle:

 

Both of us are really curious about the sequel to this book. That ending definitely left us wanting more! Have you read A Touch of Gold? What did you think?