Not much of an intro needed. @spike382 did a great job at a difficult time  

Between the Lines
by Comicality

Reviewer: spike382
Status: Complete
Word Count: 45,928

I will start off by saying this is probably one of the hardest reviews that I’ve ever written since I joined the Review Team back in 2017.   I personally still feel a bit of shock that Comicality isn’t here with us anymore, and that he won’t see this review and leave a comment on it.

I might have mentioned this elsewhere, but Comsie’s writing is what led me here to GA, after the better part of nine years reading his stories sporadically on Nifty.  I had the pleasure of interacting with him since about 2015 on his personal website, on his message board here, through personal emails and PMs.  I know there’s member’s here that had the opportunity to get much closer to him than me, but I’ll just say, Comsie seemed to make everybody who reached out to him with a kind word like a real friend.

This is intended to be one of our regular reviews in honor of Comicality,  but I hope Tim and Wildone will indulge me this little preamble.

Normally I prefer to review stories that are finished, which unfortunately left with less choices that I would have liked with Comsie’s library.  There is an older story that I read several years ago, that maybe some of our members here might not have had discovered yet.  It’s called Between the Lines.

In this story we are introduced to Eli a young college student who has just come out of the closet. He has never been in a relationship before, and is just discovering who he is.  He meets a handsome, athletic, older student at a party named Chris.  The two hit it off seemingly right away, and have a rather physical connection to each other, and this soon turns into a relationship.   They even move in together.

Eli learns though, that he might need to redefine his expectations of what a relationship is like in real life, versus what he’d always imagined. 

At the same time, he meets a very cute “boy next door” named Devon in his creative writing class.  They become fast friends with shared interests.   A bond soon forms that causes doubts within Eli about whether the relationship he’s currently in is really the right choice for him.

Between the Lines is on the shorter side for a Comicality story, and yet as usual it is packed with all the joy, cuteness, jitters, anguish, anger, and pain that might be faced by younger men finding love for the first time.   It also presents the idea that the person who seemed like the “right one,” might not actually be the right choice or even the only choice.

I recommend pretty much all of Comicality’s writing, but for anyone unfamiliar with his works, or someone looking for a very satisfying story, Between the Lines is definitely for you.

Comicality may have left us, and way too soon at that, but he left behind some of the best online fiction I’ve ever read.  Anyone who hasn’t delved into his writing, I’d invite you to do so, he left behind a beautiful and lasting legacy, stories I’ll never forget. 

Category: Fiction  Genres:  General Fiction, Romance  Sub-genres: Coming of Age, Contemporary Romance  Tags: young adult, adult, gay, roommates, college, north america  Rating: Mature