Reviewed by Ashavan (Guest Reviewer)
TITLE: Moment of Truth
SERIES: Moments in Time: Book Two
AUTHOR: Karen Stivali
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 113 pages
BLURB:
Collin expected to spend another summer fixing cars and working at the college pizzeria. Instead, he’s living in a beach house on Fire Island, waiting tables at a hip seaside restaurant and, for the first time since he and Tanner got together, they can publicly be known as boyfriends. Being “out” takes some getting used to, but with the help of new and old friends, Collin is happier than he ever imagined. And more in love. But newfound freedom brings unexpected challenges, and when friends get flirty, old insecurities arise. Moments of doubt and jealousy threaten their happiness, and Collin and Tanner must confront the truth or risk losing it all.
REVIEW:
Moment of Truth is immediately recognizable as the second in the series from the cover, done in the same startlingly simple and effective style as the first book. I’d been nervous to read this book, as the first had left me unsettled. Stivali writes beautiful evocative prose, and the first book in this series had drawn me in with what is certainly one of the best written first kiss scenes I’ve ever read. But the first book also struck me with a point that I just couldn’t accept as a gay man reading it, enough that I had set it aside for months before I could continue.
That made picking up the second book really hard. Because I loved the descriptions from the first book, and even the plot. It was just the relationship between two of the characters, Tanner and his best friend Wendy, that had really made me struggle. And I had a feeling that it was that relationship that would continue to make me struggle. Unfortunately, it did.
A lot of my critique I can’t give without spoiling the story, and for those who live for the sort of gorgeous descriptive power that Stivali delivers, I don’t want to do that. So first of all, I want to assure readers that if that sort of lurid, sensuous description is something you’re looking for, you’ll enjoy it in this book. While I can’t be sure, never having been to Fire Island, the story also has all the sorts of details I would expect that lend a sense of authenticity. The sorts of details you’d never think to include unless you’d actually been there in a summer, and that gave the setting a sense of reality that I thought was effective.
The gist of the plot is that Collin accompanies Tanner to work on Fire Island for the summer. This will allow him to save money so that he can attend continue attending college in the fall. I’m a college administrator, and I’ve watched too many students have to drop out because that effort, to make enough to cover the expected family contribution, is almost impossible without outside help. College is just too expensive for someone working food service to manage that in three months. Even financial aid assistance is unlikely, since the rules all work to examine the capacity (not willingness) of the family to contribute until the student is twenty-four.
Okay, so I can set that issue aside. It’s a niggling thing that bothers me but most readers won’t have any way of knowing that. You have a lot of sensual exploration between Collin and Tanner, which I’d expect in a young gay couple unbound from disapproving parental voices. Collin still has the expected shades of his upbringing, and so most of his personality quirks can be explained by that fear he’s lived with.
So really the character I struggled with is Tanner. Maybe it’s that there was too much we couldn’t see since the book is told from Collin’s point of view, but there was a lot that didn’t make sense. He acknowledges Collin’s jealousy and fear, but when those aspects of Collin’s personality legitimately go front and center, he sets them aside, consistently as though they don’t matter. But when there’s opportunity for him to be jealous, he acts in a frankly unattractive malicious way.
I wanted to like this story. The description and setting leaped off the page. There were enough sensual moments, almost too many, and they were hot, even if not always realistic. I like Collin as a character. I even thought Jason was spectacularly set up gradually through the story. But Tanner’s actions never seemed to quite match his words anywhere in the story. I ended up really disliking the character by the end.
We get a hesitant HFN ending, but I can’t truthfully say that I enjoyed this part of the series. There were too many things about college life that I know don’t work, and too many young gay moments that feel more pulled from a movie than reality. The side characters drive the story too much, and they aren’t developed enough to make me care or believe how they guide Tanner’s actions throughout. Stivali is a gifted writer and I love Collin’s complex character, but even in a first person story, that characterization wasn’t enough to save the story for me.
RATING: 
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