The Perils of Intimacy

In reading this book, I am reminded of the phrase "Dying is easy, comedy is hard." Sex is easy but intimacy, true intimacy, is hard. It's easy to say "I forgive you" but true forgiveness of someone and acceptance of "the flawed, broken, and beautiful things they are" can be difficult.

Mark and Jimmy meet two years ago when each man is at a critical point in their life - Jimmy in the throes of a powerful addiction to meth and Mark lost, lonely and unknowingly suffering an addiction of his own. When Jimmy steals from Mark, he steals more than trinkets: “You took my trust. Not just in you, but in people. You stole my judgment, which I was naïve enough to think was pretty good. Now I doubt myself so much that it’s hard for me to let anyone else in.”

While their one-night stand didn't instantly change Jimmy, it sets in motion his going into a recovery program, where he meets Miriam, his sponsor:

"Love yourself, Jimmy. With all your heart. That’s the only way you’ll ever find real happiness. We all make mistakes. But I always remember what my sponsor told me—mistakes are the soil we grow from. Every mistake, every bad thing we did shouldn’t be a regret, because everything we do is simply one more step on our journey. Without the mistakes, we’d never grow."

What follows isn't a sweet HEA - and I think if you read this book solely as a romance you'll miss out on something very extraordinary - but rather a difficult process of transformation and acceptance, and real forgiveness. I loved "The Perils of Intimacy" and yeah, I sobbed at points in this story for Jimmy and for Miriam, and for anyone going through a struggle with addiction of any kind. I highly recommend this book.

"... no one knows better than I do that the key to unlock our chains is not in someone else’s hands, but in our own. Always."

This novel brought me to tears a few times. Not surprising. This is the third novel of Rick Reed's that I've read and each one of them has been packed with visceral emotion and well-developed characters. Honestly, I'm running out of good descriptive words for how fabulous I think Rick's books are. His voice is a truly important one in the world of LGBTQIA+ writing.

Again, these are NOT Gay romance novels. These are "own-voices" novels. They have such authenticity about them, it's remarkable. The characters have so many dimensions and they are always flawed ... just like everyone is. These are characters that I want to get to know. I get angry at them. I find myself wanting to know more about them. Whenever I get to the end of one of Rick's books, I find myself wondering if there's another one. This is a voice you don't want to miss.

In this book, two men need forgiveness. They both need to leave something behind them in order to move forward. Sometimes, it's truly difficult to manage to continue to put one step in front of another when things keep smacking into us. Rick really captures the monotony, fear, excitement, relief, and exhaustion of recovery. At the same time he manages to allow the reader into a world of intimacy between two souls... it's captivating.