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The Judas Touch
When Tam's brother is wrongly accused of theft and locked in prison, his sister makes a solemn promise that she will not let the little lad down. But Fate makes her break her word almost immediately, as her brother is transported to Australia and Tam must embark upon an epic journey to find him.
518 pages, Paperback
First published June 7, 2001
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37 people want to read
About the author
Meg Hutchinson
37 books26 followersThis author has also released books under the name Margaret Astbury.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 12, 2019
A heart tugging saga of love and loss
When Tamar's young thirteen year old brother Benji is wrongly accused of theft she makes him a solomn promise that she will not let him down . However this is a promise she cannot keep . Circumstances keep them apart and she then hears the dreadful news that he has been found guilty and will be transported to Australia where he will serve thirty years .
Tamar has no means of support but vows she will find a way to get to Australia . Will she ever be reunited with her brother and can she now prove his innocence .
Such a gripping book !
When Tamar's young thirteen year old brother Benji is wrongly accused of theft she makes him a solomn promise that she will not let him down . However this is a promise she cannot keep . Circumstances keep them apart and she then hears the dreadful news that he has been found guilty and will be transported to Australia where he will serve thirty years .
Tamar has no means of support but vows she will find a way to get to Australia . Will she ever be reunited with her brother and can she now prove his innocence .
Such a gripping book !
July 18, 2022
I really enjoyed this. I felt towards the end it was rushed as if the author was only allocated a certain number of pages but there was still so much she wanted to say but couldn't though. That was the only downside.
June 15, 2017
It was really good. I really Love Meg Hutchinson.
June 20, 2015
To be fair I will say that this is not the sort if book/genre I typically read but I picked it up a long time ago and since it was on my shelf I figured I might as well read it. To start off with I didn't think it was that bad, it wasn't the best writing but not the worst thing I ever read. It had some entertainment value. It was a fun romp, easy to read, fast paced, bit if adventure, but as the book progressed it became ever more unbearable and frustrating. I had contemplated giving it up but I reached a point where it seemed quitting would be more of a waste of time than finishing it.
The heroine of the story Tamar is inhumanly perfect, good, and virtuous and manages to be both headstrong, determined and timid at the same time. She is also mostly useless. While I can appreciate that she lived a sheltered life in a small town with little exposure to the world beyond her naivety is taken to the point of a complete lack of common sense and basic ability to think and reason. As well her dedication to her brother mixed with her self-pity, pride and selflessness is taken to the point of sheer idiocy.
The majority of the characters in the book are one dimensional. They are either good guys or bad guys. The good guys are good to the point of near sainthood and the bad guys are like cartoon villains in their over the top maliciousness. And it seems that half the men that Tamar meets fall in love with her ( with the exception of the ones that become father figures) and the other half want to rape her. And exactly how many times can one woman narrowly escape being raped in her lifetime? It is as if the author was completely incapable of thinking up any other possible calamity that might befall a young woman traveling alone with almost no money. Whenever she got bored and didn't know what to do next she threw in a rape scene.
In addition on of the villains in the story was the son of a gypsy, a fact sated several times, and seemed to be a caricature of all negative stereotypes about gypsies. In another scene to vile characters are caught together in a homoerotic act, and while I understand that in the time setting of this story, the 19th century the act was against the law and would have been shocking and horrifying to many people of that period of time, I disliked the tone in which the author wrote the scene. For one thing the only purpose it served was to further vilify the characters, and she wrote in a way to make it seem as grotesque as possible.
I also thought that her attempt to write in dialect seemed forced and over the top.
The end of the story was rushed and left some lose ends.
The heroine of the story Tamar is inhumanly perfect, good, and virtuous and manages to be both headstrong, determined and timid at the same time. She is also mostly useless. While I can appreciate that she lived a sheltered life in a small town with little exposure to the world beyond her naivety is taken to the point of a complete lack of common sense and basic ability to think and reason. As well her dedication to her brother mixed with her self-pity, pride and selflessness is taken to the point of sheer idiocy.
The majority of the characters in the book are one dimensional. They are either good guys or bad guys. The good guys are good to the point of near sainthood and the bad guys are like cartoon villains in their over the top maliciousness. And it seems that half the men that Tamar meets fall in love with her ( with the exception of the ones that become father figures) and the other half want to rape her. And exactly how many times can one woman narrowly escape being raped in her lifetime? It is as if the author was completely incapable of thinking up any other possible calamity that might befall a young woman traveling alone with almost no money. Whenever she got bored and didn't know what to do next she threw in a rape scene.
In addition on of the villains in the story was the son of a gypsy, a fact sated several times, and seemed to be a caricature of all negative stereotypes about gypsies. In another scene to vile characters are caught together in a homoerotic act, and while I understand that in the time setting of this story, the 19th century the act was against the law and would have been shocking and horrifying to many people of that period of time, I disliked the tone in which the author wrote the scene. For one thing the only purpose it served was to further vilify the characters, and she wrote in a way to make it seem as grotesque as possible.
I also thought that her attempt to write in dialect seemed forced and over the top.
The end of the story was rushed and left some lose ends.
June 1, 2013
Alas I was unable to finish listening to this audio book as the last tape was damaged! Aargh! I quite enjoyed this story as far as I'd got, although I did find the heroine rather annoying after a bit - she was so perfect, it grated on my nerves. The characters in this book did seem to be either Very Very Good or Very Very Bad. But still, an entertaining enough listen.
April 6, 2012
i swore to god that i will never read a chick lit after this .
end of story ;)
end of story ;)
September 20, 2013
Tam really had a tough experience but i loved her courage1
the novel was great
the novel was great
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews