Rogue has always been one of my favourite superhero characters - possibly because the X-Men movies were my gateway to comic books, and who couldn't fail to fall in love with Anna Paquin's adorably wide-eyed and lost interpretation of the character - so I was really excited to get this book! I enjoyed it a lot; it's a thoroughly engrossing story of first love, isolation and self-acceptance, with a smart sci-fi twist. Rogue Touch reimagines Rogue's origin story yet again, and we find her eighteen years old and on the run, with no plans and very little hope until she befriends the mysterious and unworldly young man who seems to be following her. But is he everything he seems to be, and where is this desperate roadtrip leading?
This is a lovely book: well-written, well-paced, intriguing, romantic and imaginative. Rogue's voice is individual and sympathetic, and the story unfolds with twists I didn't see coming. It's definitely worth reading, suspicious as I initially was when I first heard Marvel were publishing both this book and the (fabulous) She-Hulk Diaries.
The Marvel aspect of this novel is perhaps where it falls down a little, and is my one problem with it, actually! This is an atmospheric, gripping and moving story about first love, about a teenage girl coming to terms with an ability that could be a gift or a curse, who is part of a bigger picture that she could never have imagined. It's just not necessarily a story set in any recognisable Marvel universe. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, of course, but since the novel promises that this is a story about Rogue, it's a little jarring to read a whole book with no references to the larger universe she's in; no X-Men, no superheroes, no one else with powers like hers. It's more like a clever and enjoyable sci-fi love story with a main heroine I'm predisposed to like than a book written about a well-known superhero character.
It's for that reason I'm giving this book four and not five stars; I liked it a lot, and definitely recommend it, but as a longtime fan of both comics and X-Men in particular, I was disappointed that I wasn't given more of the wider Marvel universe to explore.
