Reviewed by Ashavan (Guest Reviewer)
TITLE: Moment of Impact
SERIES: Moments in Time #1
AUTHOR: Karen Stivali
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 110 pages
BLURB:
Outside Collin Fitzpatrick’s dorm room is a dangerous place. Beyond his door the students of his small, conservative college think he’s straight, as does his Catholic family who’d disown him if they learned the truth. Inside, he’s safe with his incredibly sexy roommate Tanner D’Amico. Their room makes a perfect place to hide away and fall in love. The moment they cross the line from roommates to lovers, Collin becomes caught between their heavenly passionate encounters and the hellish reality that someone might find out and destroy everything. Tanner’s not used to being so confined, and wants to show the world how much he loves Collin. But Collin’s not sure he’s ready for the impact stepping outside will make.
REVIEW:
Moment of Impact draws you in with a cover — I’ll go ahead and describe it as impactful — and an unusual and first line that tells the reader to expect something a bit different with this story. The no nonsense start has the effect of placing you fairly immediately in Collin’s head and it fairly quickly establishes a scene familiar to anyone who has either gone to college or visited one. My own college days flooded back to me in a rush within the first couple paragraphs, even though the room itself is scarcely described.
The great strength of this story is in description, and because of where and how it starts, with Collin witnessing Tanner at what is for most men a very vulnerable moment, the way the author handles sensuality and eroticism is crucial. And Stilvali handles it remarkably well, placing the reader in that voyeuristic role where empathy with the main character is impossible to avoid. So as a reader we’re right with Collin as he watches Tanner. It’s desperate and secret and done in a way that as a reader you wonder for a moment if the story can possibly maintain such crafted sensuality. And then Stivali describes for us a kiss, and maybe it’s because I’m a gay guy who remembers what the difference between kissing girls and guys was for me, but that kiss sold me on the story. I wanted to experience this coming out with Collin, I wanted to feel him learn Tanner’s body in this exquisitely beautiful sensual way the author was sharing.
The story twists then, taking a turn for the serious, and in a big way. There are so many stages to coming out, and in college the difficulty is always in being in different places. Because when one person is fairly comfortably out (at least to friends) and the other isn’t out at all, then you’re pretty guaranteed fireworks. And that’s what we get. Slow building awkwardness that gradually becomes an explosion.
I guess my biggest problem is that when the explosion happens, Tanner’s overprotective sort-of-ex-girlfriend has a conversation with Collin. A conversation that amounted to “you need come out faster.” That might have been okay in a conversation with Tanner, but I didn’t find Collin’s response to it realistic, given his history. I felt like it should have made him angry, not meek and accepting, as it made me angry. I resented it, and it made me put down the book.
I think because of that, I had a hard time coming back to the story and finishing. It’s not that I didn’t like the conclusion (though I’m still not clear on how Collin’s mom knew to show up at the end). It’s that coming out is such a difficult part of a young gay man’s life, and I felt that process was disrespected in a harmful way.
Overall, I liked the story. The descriptions of the sensual scenes were fantastic, and the book is worth reading just for that. The story is sex heavy, but in a way that’s realistic, given the character’s starting repressed feelings, and the sort of expected rush in a new relationship to try everything. The drama, when it appears, is believable. But I can’t give the story the top marks I’d like to, because that one scene shook me so far out of the story that I didn’t want to finish.
Most people probably won’t have the strong reaction that I did, so if you like coming of age new adult stories with a bit of drama and angst, you’ll probably like this story.
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