reviews_and_ramblings | Top 100 Gay Novel: Collision Course by K.A. Mitchell

Best Contemporary Novel (1° place) and Best Overall Gay Novel (3° place) at the 2009 Rainbow Awards

If you decide to read this book, plan it when you have time, since it's more than 240 pages long and probably you will not want to let it down till the end.

Joey is a spin off character from Diving in Deep: he was Noah's ex boyfriend and in that book he was in a new relationship with Mark, a leatherman with the body of a bear and the character of a teddy bear... despite the apparently happiness of that couple, when Collision Course begins, Joey has just moved in a new city and moved on his relationship with Mark. Mark is now ex boyfriend number ten... someone could think that Joey is a bit of a slut. And instead he is a social worker, a man who really likes kids, someone who always cares for the other, he probably wants so much a family... is it true? or maybe Joey is fearing commitment like he is accusing his new boyfriend to do? Despite his independent attitude, for me Joey has still some personal issues to resolve before he is ready to build something steady with a partner.

Yes since Joey is always ready to jump from an ex boyfriend to a new one, and he did so also this time; the lucky chosen is Aaron, a paramedic he meets when he is involved in a car accident, the first of a series of accidents that convince Aaron that it's better if Joey remains with him till he is not again in full health. But Aaron has a pretty bad past experience with social workers and he doesn't like when Joey tries to psychoanalyze him: if Joey wants to stay with him and share his bed, good, but when it's day everyone toward their different path and not mingle with personal matters (like if sex wasn't personal...). Joey is very good to convince himself that he can accept Aaron's rules and still doing is undercover psychological diagnosis, but when he is too involved it's not easy to be an impartial judge.

As I said the story is very long and so it's not easy to summarize all the nice things that made me like it. For example, I liked that Joey, despite his curiosity, didn't use his work influence to dig on Aaron's past before the man feels the desire to talk to him. Another thing I like is that the past is the past and Joey doesn't have a magic wand to undo all the previous mistakes and turn Aaron's family in a perfect fiction happy family. And I like that the book doesn't end when Aaron and Joey discover that they love each other, since love is not the cure for all the problems, and they still have to deal with the fact that they are two independent adult, with different behavior, that need to work out a way to live together.

There is also a lot of sex, actually Joey and Aaron begin their sexual marathon day first and go on, even when they are mad at each other, even when it seems that only when they are having sex they aren't arguing. Sex between them is always easy and good, and so it's for the reader, or at least for me that I didn't skip neither one of their encounters...