Miles is grieving for his girlfriend, trans girl Vivian who is being kept alive on life support after a suicide attempt. His parents send him to Iceland (alright for some) to help him move on and the majority of the book is set in Iceland and told through instant messages from Miles to Vivian as a sort of diary.

The main problem I had with this book was that it bored me. There was nothing wrong with the writing per se but it just didn't grab me. I have however read a lot of very negative reviews of this book since reading it myself and I don't feel qualified to comment on Trans issues so I would defer to those who do.

Note: All of this is coming from my cis perspective. I can only do the best that I know how to do, but if you are a trans individual who disagrees with my perspective, or if you have an own-voice review for this book, please let me know in the comments and I would love to help boost your voice!

There are some minor spoilers ahead, because I couldn't discuss all of the problems I had with this book without them.

Content warnings: suicide, self harm, abuse, transphobia, mental illness, homophobia, pedophilia.

Miles Away From You tells the story of Miles, who is grieving the loss of his girlfriend, Vivian, after she attempted suicide. He documents his grief, as well as his attempt at healing via a summer trip to Iceland, through instant messages to Vivian's abandoned social media account. She's been on life support for a year and a half, and Miles' greatest frustration is the fact that he wants her to be taken off of life support and allowed to rest; meanwhile, her religious, transphobic parents refuse to pull the plug.

Off the bat, the book struggles from White Savior Complex: Miles and his accepting, lovely mothers are all white, while Vivian's transphobic, abusive parents are black. Vivian and her parents are the only characters of color in a book saturated with white people. (While Miles does let us know that he's got a small fraction of Cherokee heritage, it's made pretty evident that he is, for all intents and purpose, white-passing.)

On top of that, Vivian herself is not presented as a likable character. There's actually a line in the book where Miles is "talking" to Vivian and says that she constantly did scary or cruel things to shock him, just so she could be sure he cared. This is emotional abuse, and while it's brought up very quickly, it is never addressed, and our trans character is not painted in a good light at all.

Meanwhile, the bulk of the story is less about Miles' grief, and more about his adventures in Iceland and his determination to get laid. He's pan/demi, but spend most of the book pursuing sex with women in a manner, and with a mindset, that felt really objectifying and gross. All of the women in this story, besides his mother and Vivian, seem to only exist to serve Miles' sexual fantasies. He does eventually pursue a meaningful relationship with a gay man, and the love interest's character was the only genuinely enjoyable part of the story for me.

The LI is surprisingly three-dimensional: we meet his family (including his abusive and homophobic father), and watch him overcome an abusive and controlling relationship with a pedophile. The moments we spent with this character were the only times I was able to connect to the story, though even those exchanges were typically laced with annoyance. Miles felt the need to endlessly make fun of the love interest, whether it was out loud or in his own head (remarks about the man's appearance, style, hair, accent, etc.). All of this grew old fast, when coupled with Miles' seeming disregard for Icelandic culture and customs in general (most of which were not painted in a very kind light - are you seeing a theme?).

Finally, one of the biggest issues I had with this book: Vivian's incredibly slow, drawn-out death. Her suicide is a vehicle for Miles' story, rather than being depicted as the genuine tragedy it is. When she finally passed away, her parents dead-named her headstone, and it was such a low blow! The thought of an unsuspecting trans kid picking this book up and reading this feels so bad to me, and makes me wish I could keep this story from ever hurting anyone. If it felt this bad to me, as a cis person with cis privileges, I can't fathom how harmful Miles Away From You could be for a trans individual.

Thank you to HMH Books for Young Readers for providing me with this ARC in exchange for my honest review!

DNF. I was so looking forward to this as the MC is pansexual but he’s a white cis dude and it’s all about his experiences after his black trans girlfriend commits suicide and we literally do not need another story about a black trans girl killing herself to further a white guys development.

Unfortunately I was unable to read this book as the PDF file wasn't compatible with my kindle.. I do look forward to reading this book in the future.

This is a really well-written and compelling story with a strong narrative voice in Miles. It captured the strange magic of Iceland (as seen through the eyes of a foreigner) really well, and the depiction of Miles' grief over the loss of his girlfriend was very touching. In terms of gender and sexuality it's possibly one of the most diverse YA novels out there, with (as far as I remember!) pansexual, demisexual, gay, lesbian, trans and genderfluid, all of which is included very naturally.

It's a really well-done book about a whole bunch of difficult subjects. It's hard to say I enjoyed it, but there are some things I did very much enjoy.

I liked Miles, actually. He sounded and acted like a teenager, including being internet/tumblr-literate and having the correct terminology for concepts such as dysphoria and demisexuality. He mentions actually reading up on dysphoria once for Vivian. I liked that he made some bad/silly choices, and sometimes there were consequences for them, but in general they were his choices to make, and he made them. I liked that not everything went well for him. I also thought that his anxiety -- the run-of-the-mill kind that made him worry about everything, rather than the deeply debilitating kind -- was well done.

I loved the setting; I loved that Miles was remarkably unprepared to go to Iceland by himself and he went anyway. It's obvious that the author has been to Iceland, even without her needing to mention it in the acknowledgments, because of the kinds of details you only get from having done the same thing your character did. Google can only tell you so much.

I also very much enjoyed the complexity. There are no simple answers to much of anything, including Miles and Vivian's relationship and Oskar's relationship with both Jack and his family. There are no simple answers to grief.

This is a very queer book; I think there might have been one or two cis straight allo characters total? Miles has two mothers; Vivian is of course trans. Practically everyone he ran into was also queer. Vivian wasn't the only trans person in the book, although she was the only one with a major role.

But.

The elephant in the room is that this book is about a boy going on a journey to find himself while his trans girlfriend is in a coma because she tried to commit suicide. It makes it a touch difficult to review, as I'm not trans myself. But on the plus sides for the author, as I mentioned, Vivian isn't the only trans person in the book; in addition, she shows up enough in flashbacks that you get a good sense of her as a dynamic character. Miles acknowledges a few times that there's a balance between prioritizing himself in his recovery from losing her and being a jerk about it. The reality is that trans women (and trans women of color) have incredibly high suicide rates, and it's often other parts of the queer community who mourn. The author did have at least one trans woman help her with crafting Vivian, as it says in the acknowledgments. (Possibly more but one that I'm certain of.)

But.

I can't in good conscience recommend it to any of my trans friends because it's incredibly rough to read and while it may be cathartic to a certain kind of trans reader, I don't know if I know any of those people.

Here's a list of all the content notes I can remember: Vivian dies near the end, but there's never any question that this is going to happen. There are also discussions of suicide and euthanasia (pulling the plug), discussions of dysphoria, references to eating disorders, and two separate subplots involving pedophilia and child sexual abuse (not to/involving Miles or Vivian). There's also physical violence done to Miles for kind of a complicated reason. The book is also kind of soaked in grief and has a little bit of a misuse of a doctor/patient relationship that comes up towards the end. There's also a lot of drinking and sex/desire.

Miles Away from You is very much a "not you, it's me" sort of book. It's told entirely through messages from Miles to his comatose girlfriend Vivian and that's just not the best way to tell this story. The entire book centers around Miles dealing with the grief surrounding Vivian's suicide attempt that has left him depressed and apathetic. In order to learn to "live again" he goes on a globetrotting adventure to take photos of Vivian's shoes wherever he is as some sort of closure.

The issue with the story is that since it's told entirely through messages from Miles to Vivian it's essentially all tell. Nothing is shown to the audience, because the narrative structure demands Miles tell everything to Vivian, and thus the reader. He tells us how he's hurting, how beautiful Iceland is, how much he misses Vivian and that's just not a good way to tell a story that centers on the healing process and grief. We should connect with Miles and his emotional struggle on a personal and emotional level, but we can't do that because Miles is constantly telling us how he feels about certain events.

The diary/message/letter format works better with coming of age stories that center more around self-identity then emotional growth because that growth works better in a telling format. "This happened and it caused this and this". While something as complex as grief, the reader shouldn't be told how Miles' feels but shown through his actions and desires without the narrative spelling out every detail. And, because of that, the story is incredibly hard to immerse yourself into.

However, Miles Away from You does have a few positive aspects. I liked how it tackled transphobia in the form of Vivian's parents and how it looked into sexualities that weren't just homo/bisexual. Miles describes himself as a pansexual queer, which was refreshing, and it also tried to describe the complexities Vivian's suicide attempt left on Miles. In the beginning of the book, Miles remarks how it was ironic that Vivian hated her body, but now that's all that's left of her. She's not dead, but not alive either and I liked how the book presented that very complex idea in a simple and easy to digest way. I just wish it was shown better.

Miles Away from You is a book where the structure impends the story to the point where it's nearly impossible to get into it. The message, theme, and characters are, dare I say, important, but they're trapped in a structure that doesn't do them the justice they deserve. Which is a shame.

Miles Away from You had a great premise, about Miles coming to terms with Vivian's suicide. The execution, however, wasn't my style. I think some LGBTQ youth might enjoy this book, but Miles having totally supportive lesbian parents may be a hard sell for many of the readers.

This is a fantastic book. I really, really enjoyed reading it. The characters were well developed and interesting. I think the author really captured grief well. I also liked the setting and it made me want to visit Iceland. I would definitely recommend this book to students, although it does have some sexual content. I think stories like this area important to tell and students need more diverse literary options.

This was a sweet book with an endearingly honest protagonist in Miles, an eighteen year old whose girlfriend Vivian is in a coma due to an overdose. Although it's written in the format of letters to Viv, it doesn't focus on her, more on his journey to find out who he is without her. Gender identity and sexuality is dealt with deftly and with consideration and I loved the honest depictions of sex. Because newsflash! teenagers have sex, and it's good to read a book which doesn't skirt around the issue. And it's enough to make anyone want to visit Iceland.

(I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review)

In the book description it said that this book was perfect for Adam Silvera. That means it would be perfect for me because I am a Adam Silvera fan. It wasn’t perfect but it was a great unexpected read indeed. This book talks about Miles who messages his trans girlfriend Vivian, who's in a coma. It is told trough instant messages so we feel so connected to Miles and how he is coping with loss & love. The roadtrip – travel plot was really entertaining since I really have always loved both of these things but at the same time it was impossible not to feel sad for what this teen was going trough. I can’t really comment on the gender aspect of the book so I am excited to see what own voices reviewers thought of it. I’m pretty sure that what I enjoyed the most about this book was Miles due to his personality, he is always throwing some snark in between chapters & you never really get bored with his voice. Overall this book did not dissapoint and I will most probably read whatever the writer publishes next.

American protagonist Miles is trying to deal with his trans girlfriend, Vivian, being in a coma following a suicide attempt when his moms arrange a month in a hotel in Iceland for him to attempt to heal. Despite me feeling a bit “woah! How much did THAT cost?” I managed to get behind his book because Miles is a compelling and funny narrator who can acknowledge his own privilege and occasional whininess. This was an emotional and surprising read that made me want to go to Iceland even more than I already did - and read anything else the author writes.

Please begin sharing your materials via kindle edition. I cannot view the protected PDFs on my device, which means I can't actually review materials for purchase for my library.

Apologies I am unable to read and review a download only title