Reviewed by Dan
TITLE: Angels of Mercy Volume One: Elliot
SERIES: Angels of Mercy #1
AUTHOR: S. A. Collins
PUBLISHER: Self-Published
LENGTH: 540 Pages
RELEASE DATE: March 23rd 2015
BLURB:
On the cusp of his senior year at Mercy High, Elliot Donahey, an out but terminally shy gay young man who keeps to the shadows – never wanting to be seen or noticed – suddenly finds himself in the arms of the highest profile jock on campus, local star quarterback, Marco Sforza. Their lives, and those closest to them will never be the same.
Set against the backdrop of competitive sports, this character study work deep dives into the lives of these young men who each must “play the game” so Marco can continue to play the game he loves. They are just trying to find some small slice of happiness to call their own amidst their hellish final year of high school.
Author’s Note: Angels of Mercy is first and foremost, a character study. A great deal of it is inner-monologue. Elliot will pause the action, will break momentum as he grapples with his world – all the while flipping a finger to the fourth wall. He knows you’re there. It was far more important to me as its author (and a gay man) that the reader come away with the whys of Elliot’s choices in how he navigates his often tumultuous world. The same can be said of Marco (his jock boyfriend) who will pick up the tale with Volume Two (due summer of 2015). I’ve read much queer literature and what I find rather interesting is that for the majority of it, very little is written about the character’s headspace. When you live in a world where you constantly have to be vigilant as you navigate through, it can make for some very powerful storytelling. That is my goal in writing these boys’ lives. I want the reader who may not be queer themselves to come away with what it might be like to be in a gayboy’s shoes – constantly polling and pulse-checking your world because your very survival depends upon it. All of that while you hope, you secretly pray, that you’ll find someone who will see you too and find they can’t live without you in their world. A small slice of happiness to call your own. And though you do everything to keep to yourself, you may still run into those who find your very existence threatens who they are and how they think the world should run. I pull no punches with this work. They are hormonally charged eighteen year old young men who are sexually active. While the sex is present in the work it is not gratuitous in that the main character does evolve from his physical intimacy with his high-profile boyfriend. It is not a genre romance read either, though it has a very strong romance threaded in the work. These elements bring a light to their world that attracts all the wrong attention. In a time where more queer youth are coming out to their teammates and their loved ones, I find that work of this nature is both timely and necessary to tell. I hope you’ll find it as interesting and provocative a read as I believe it is.
REVIEW:
I asked to review this book after having read some of the reviews for it on both Amazon and Goodreads. I’m a fan of long books, and thought this might just fit the bill for me. It did, and it didn’t. Let me explain.
I really enjoyed the story of Elliot and Marco in some respects. In other respects I didn’t like it at all. The author did a fantastic job at making me like the character of Elliot and also making me LOATHE his character as well. There was a point at roughly 60-65% that I almost decided to take a “did not complete” because of some things Elliot did, or didn’t do as the case might be.
Elliot Donahey, is a high school senior, working at the family owned Dairy Queen, which he affectionately refers to as “the Q”. Business hasn’t been very good, and they are struggling to stay in business with little or no customers. Then one day while Elliot is there by himself, the school quarterback hunk, Marco Sforza, comes in and confesses his undying love to Elliot. Turns out he has been stalking Elliot for two years getting up his courage to approach him. Yeah…I didn’t get the realism there either.
From there the two guys enter into a relationship…with lots of sex…but hidden from the world. There is some insta-love (in my opinion the stalking time doesn’t count) and all of sudden they are in love, promising to marry each other and live happily ever after. Well…if they can avoid the school bullies. One issue I had with them was sometimes they acted like they were in their mid-twenties and other times they acted like they were twelve. Never did it feel like two eighteen year old high school seniors. There was a lot of angst, and a lot of second guessing himself on Elliot’s part which, while good in the beginning, began to wear on me until as I mentioned above, I almost quit reading.
I wanted so much to love this book, but I’ve got to be honest. It was one of the longest reads I’ve had in years. It took me what felt like forever to plod through it. I liked the story, but it could have been far, far better with several thousand less words. At times the story seemed to repeat itself, and there was so much detail and minutiae between actions that I sometimes forgot where I was and would have to flip back a few pages.
There is also a twist in the story with a mysterious guy, named “Angelo”, who shows up once in a while that I figured out before the end of the book, when something happened that totally infuriated me.
I have book two in the series, but I’m not sure I’ll read it right away, mainly because of the “Angelo” twist which I’m still stewing about….who does that??? Book two is 700+ pages, which is too much for my schedule right now anyway. And if I’m being honest, I wasn’t like “oh I’ve got to read the next book” when I finished this one. The author’s writing is above average and the story was good, but even the dramatic cliffhanger isn’t really enough to make me grab book two right now.
RATING: 
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