I really don’t want to give a review because I ended up DNFing at 44%. I just wasn’t into it tasted like an uncarbonated drink.

I went into reading this book not knowing much and that's something I've been doing lately and I've loved each book but sadly that's not the case for this one. I wanted to love this book, so much so that I forced myself to finish it. Not sure if it was the writing style or the characters themselves but this one just didn't work.

I've loved Amber Smith and this (her third) is my favorite yet. There's a lot going on (grief and trauma and family issues) but there's also a lot of good (love!). She's becoming one of my most favorite authors because of the way she tackles these incredibly hard issues. It never feels like a melodrama and it never feels like an afterschool special where things are really glossed over, either. Things are handled with the sensitivity and gravity they deserve, but it never feels cheesy or hopeless. It's got to be an incredibly hard thing to do but she makes it look effortless.

There's a lot to love here but my personal favorite is how Maia is not at all fazed by Chris being trans. She literally could not care less, which is how we should all be.

It's an Amber Smith book so you can expect two things: it's going to be really good and it's going to be very hard to read. It's intense and painful in parts, but it's so worth the effort and tears.

Highly recommended.

DNFed at 27%. I'll be completely honest, this book was something I was interested in purely because I love the author. Typically when I have an auto-buy author, I don't read the description. This was a learning lesson for me. I didn't feel comfortable reading from the perspective of a trans character written by Amber.

This story is one I’ll be thinking about for a long time. Chris and Maia as characters were so well written and real that I could truly see their summer unfold as the book went on. I really appreciated getting to see how Maia’s family handled her sister’s death and how grief is a complicated thing that we (as people in general) find difficult to understand and come to terms with.

I found the ending to be very bittersweet and I completely understand the author’s intention with it because at the end of the day, not every story is going to have a perfectly tied bow at the end to wrap everything up.

Sweet story with depth, but that could have been edited a bit better. It didn't feel cliche which can be hard with realistic YA. Would recommend to YA romance readers. 3.5 stars

This is my first book by author Amber Smith. I was excited to read Something like Gravity as soon as I read they synopsis.
However, I think this book needed some more editing (too much details about things that don't really matter) and I didn't really feel like there was much of a plot.
I will try other books by this author, but this one didn't work for me.

I'm between 4 and 4.5 stars.

"It's hard to figure out what you're supposed to be when you've never even really known who you were in the first place—that was something I'd realized only recently. Something I didn't think my friends would understand. After all, I looked the same and dressed the same and talked the same as I always had. But I wasn't the same."

Chris and Maia meet for the first time when he almost hits her with his car. Neither one is really paying attention, but both feel some sort of connection. Their next few encounters don't improve much, more because Maia misreads Chris' intentions. Yet life continues to throw their paths together until they simply can't stay away from each other.

Both are nursing some serious wounds. Chris is in North Carolina for the summer, taking a break from his parents and his New York hometown, where he was physically assaulted by several classmates shortly after coming out as transgender. Maia is still reeling from the sudden death of her older sister, and is trying to figure out how to move on, while understanding just what their relationship meant.

"I was starting to understand that there's also a price that comes with being a boy, one that's different from being a girl. Maybe the price is more one of a responsibility—to not only be a decent person, like everyone else, and not only to not turn scary or mean or dangerous, but to never forget."

Little by little they begin to open up to one another (although not fully), and their relationship starts to deepen. However, both are keeping secrets which could topple anything they've built. At the same time, both are dealing with fractured relationships with their parents, too. It's a lot for any teenagers to handle, much less two with so much emotional baggage.

Falling in love often requires taking a leap, a leap of faith and trust. It forces us to be braver than we think we can be, but it also leaves us more vulnerable than we'd ever want to be, yet the payoff can be greater than we'd even hope. In Amber Smith's beautiful new novel Something Like Gravity, two teenagers feel the strong pull of love and attraction yet must battle the opposing forces that threaten to undo them.

I loved this book and thought it was so well-written. Over the last few months I've started reading more books with transgender characters in them and they've really helped me understand how similar and different our experiences are. Smith created characters you root for, even when they annoy you, and I felt that I was viewing the story through a very fragile shell of poignancy and emotion which deepened the beauty of the book.

Sure, some of the plot is predictable, although Smith kept my worries at bay that the plot might veer too far into melodramatic territory a few times. I really enjoyed the parallels between love and gravity, as I never honestly thought about how similar the two can be.

This is the first of Smith's books I've read, but I'm definitely going to read her earlier work. I really was drawn into her storytelling and the love she had for her characters. I always know I enjoyed a book when I want to know what happens after the story ends—perhaps we'll see Maia and Chris again someday.

NetGalley and Margaret K. McElderry Books provided me an advance copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making it available!

Something Like Gravity is an emotional story about Chris a transgender boy dealing with a brutal attack by classmates and Maia who is trying to live life after the passing of her older sister. Such a beautiful story of love and acceptance! Thank you to Netgalley and HarperCollins Publishers for a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review! I highly recommend this one!

I didn’t fall in love with this book. I wasn’t impressed with the writing style, the setting, the characters, or really even the story line. I think the concept was great, but the execution itself wasn’t. I didn’t see the point of Maia following in her sisters footsteps (or, copying her sister and lying to Chris). I didn’t like Maia’s personality or her weird moods. I didn’t like either of the families. I did like the short lived romance that the two characters shared, but also didn’t understand why it ended so fast (the whole break up seemed so trivial?). I’m glad that everything ended on a better note for both families, but it seemed unfinished for Chris and Maia and I feel like their whole romance was almost a waste. It seemed to help them both “heal” but I also think they could’ve done it in another way. The plot could have focused more on either of the characters without the other and I feel like that would have made for a stronger story. I kept expecting to like this book a lot more than I did in the end. I kept waiting for it to get better, and it never did. I wasn’t a fan overall.

Thank you NetGalley for proving me with an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

This book was NOT bad! A 3 star rating is pretty average for me. I was just expecting a lot more.

I want to start off by saying that I am cisgender, therefore I cannot speak on behalf of the transgender representation.

This story follows Chris and Maia, Chris dealing with the trauma he has faced being a transgender teen, and Maia dealing with the grief of her sisters death and broken family. They meet and soon develop feelings for each other. I guess I enjoyed the relationship, but felt like the pacing was off. The sex and “I love yous” just didn’t feel right? And I felt like there should’ve been a much deeper talk and understanding of each other. I think I would’ve preferred them as friends. As for the characters individually, I enjoyed reading from Chris’s POV! Maia is where my problems occurred. As a character she just felt flat and I couldn’t connect with her. I understand she was dealing with her own grief, but she lied several times and kept things from people which was annoying. I felt like the author was just throwing things at her left and right to add to the story and her character arc. The writing was good! Descriptions got a little wordy at times. I also thought space would play a much more significant role than it did.

I also was not a fan of the ending. I hate when books end so vaguely, I need details!! I need to know what happened!! It definitely took away from the story for me and I just didn’t find it hard hitting.

This book was very refreshing. It is a dual POV changing in chapters. The characters never got muddy at all, even if the chapters did not tell you who was talking you would know. They each had such clear distinct voices.
I loved how much Maia accepted Chris straight out the gate. I feel like it was all done so well. The sex scene was done so well too especially the constant “is this okay” and “you can touch here but not here” felt so accurate.
I wish that Maia had developed just a little more but hey that’s grief. She is doing her best with a family who is living in denial, it is no wonder she is not heathy or mature. I am very happy that they made some leaps toward the end of the book.
Chris was so real and authentic. His character development was SO AMAZING that is all. His parents, well mostly mother, made me so damn mad. I was so over them being shitty. The dad tried but should have stood up for him more. Again, though they made leaps at the end of the story but I wish it had happened a little sooner.
Also the end just gutted me even though it is super realistic.

I really enjoyed this book and particularly the insight into the life of a transgender teen. The story itself was a normal love story, and the fact that one teen was transgender was treated as just another reasonable complication in the teens lives. I really appreciated the normality of the emotions and situations. Chris and Maia were both really sweet kids dealing with tough twists and turns in their lives. Maia’s beloved older sister Mallory died suddenly leaving her obsessively trying to recapture life the way Mallory saw it. Chris had been attacked viciously by a group of boys at his school and was still recovering from the physical and emotional wounds of that encounter. His mother was not dealing well with his transition, and Chris felt rejected by her. The story begins with Chris going to spend the summer with his aunt, who happens to live next door to Maia. The author treated the issues in transitioning sensitively and I gained a lot of understanding in areas I hadn’t even thought about, such as binding and the difficulties involved in that. One reviewer was critical of the way some things were handled and found it unrealistic, and thought it would have been better if the author had been trans themself. I thought it wonderful that a non trans author wrote it as beautifully as she did. Yes, there were some contradictions in the depiction, but not enough to spoil it by any means. The love scenes were handled with care, not going too far but highlighting the fears of Chris and the emotions of Maia. I know some transgender kids and this made me even more tuned in to the issues they face with great courage. Good job, Amber Smith.

Many thanks to Simon and Schuster and Netgalley for an arc of this book.

It is the first book I’ve read with a transgender character, so it was new to me. It deals with Chris’ story before and after his transition, not just personal but also with his social circle and his parent. It helped me understand a bit more about what transgender people go through their daily basis. On Maia’s side I think it described in a very accurate way the emocional charge that is to lose someone close to you.
The characters in the story were lovable since the very beginning and you can see their development while the plot unravels. In my personal point of view that factor plays a great roll in a good book.
While some scenes were a bit predictable it still hooked you up to know what happened and if it did, the thrill was still present. There weren’t a look of sudden twist on the story. Instead there were little turns that left you intrigued on what was going to happen next.
To me, the book was just perfect, it didn’t felt like a heavy nor light read, but it still managed to left me wanting for more, not that the story felt incomplete but because I just didn’t wanted it to end. I would recommend this book to teenagers, because is the age of finding your true self and this book might help with that. I’m looking forward to read more about the author.

As a trans person on the masc spectrum, let me say that the trans representation in this book is not only offensive, it's downright unbelievable. Were there any actual trans masc sensitivity readers or consultants brought in? If so, did they tell the author what they wanted to hear, or what they needed to hear? Assuming a trans guy passes 100% of the time at 17 is laughable. That doesn't happen even in adulthood, with medical intervention. For more information on how wrong this book is, I refer you to this review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2842160815?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

Something Like Gravity by Amber Smith follows two characters - Chris & Maia - during the summer before their senior year. They’re both running from their haunted pasts, though neither of their own making.

Chris is still healing from a very traumatic event that landed him in the hospital and subsequently barred from school. Like all teenagers, he’s dealing with identity issues. Who is he? What does he want from life? How does he want to present himself to the world? These questions of identity are even deeper for Chris because he’s transgender.

Not being transgender myself, it’s hard to imagine what Chris goes through, though Smith does a fantastic job delving into some of the issues a transgender teenager can face. I can identify with Chris’s feelings of inadequacy and otherness, though certainly not to the extent he faces them. Many teenagers feel the same, though struggling with being in the wrong body adds a layer of complexity many can’t even begin to comprehend.

It doesn’t help that his parents are fighting over him, either. His father is accepting of him as he is, but Chris’s mother is another story. She can’t seem to get Chris’s pronouns right and always seems angry with him. So instead of stewing the summer as a captive in his own home, Chris asks if he can stay with his Aunt Isobel, who lives in a small North Carolina town. After arguments and discussions, Chris’s mother finally relents, though she isn’t happy about it.

Maia is drowning in grief. She lost her sister, Mallory, suddenly and all she has to cling to are her memories and the photographs Mallory left behind. She doesn’t know how to process her grief, and her parents aren’t helping either; before Mallory’s death, they’d separated, though for financial reasons they continued living together. Maia not only deals with her parents separation and the tension that causes in the family, but also faces losing her only sibling.

She doesn’t handle it well, unfortunately. She drinks to excess, pushes away her friends, gets drunk at a party and insults the only other person truly close to Mallory, thus driving away her chance to feel connected to her sister. Maia hoards her sister’s belongings, even going so far as to carry around Mallory’s precious camera just to feel close to her. That’s when she meets Chris when he almost runs her over with his aunts’s decrepit station wagon.

Their love is a super cute testament to the purity of teenage love. And I don’t mean pure in the “no sex” kinda way. Teenage love is pure and full of hope, without all the baggage and jaded cynicism adults carry around. It’s refreshing to see such joy on the page; my usual reads are much darker in tone and theme.

Chris and Maia aren’t off the hook, though. They are not completely honest with each other. Chris is unsure if he should mention he’s transgender, as he never intended to fall in love with anyone in North Carolina. And Maia pretends she’s a photographer, carrying around Mallory’s camera and pretending to snap photographs of places her sister has already been in an effort to feel closer to her.

But inevitably the truth comes to light. It’s in these moments where Smith’s writing truly shines. Maia keeps lying to Chris about photography and eventually pushes him away. Chris runs from the conflict, likely as a coping mechanism from the trauma he faced before. I won’t spoil the ending for you, but I enjoyed the way Smith wrapped things up. The ending has a realistic sense of gravitas that sits with me even now.

I can’t speak to the accuracy of the portrayal of Chris as a transgender character, and I know some people are disappointed that yet another cis gendered writer is co-opting a transgender story for her own. What I can say is I enjoyed this novel. The characters are flawed and multifaceted. The love story is gentle and sweet, and a fitting reminder of what relationships felt like as a teenager. I’ve never read anything by Amber Smith, but I think that will change sooner rather than later.

Something Like Gravity depicts the journey to self discovery, and the growth that results from it. Seeing Maya and Chris both deal with the traumas that occurred in each of their lives and how it impacted their interactions with each other, as well as their relationship was was a mind- opening element to the story. I also applaud how the author presented Chris being transgender and how he and others close to him were affected, it showed authentic and raw emotion to such an emotional and significant topic. I love that Chris and Maia’s relationship assisted them both on their journeys of recovery and personal growth, as well as helped them be able to open up to people close in their life.

Thanks so much to Fantastic Flying Book Club for including me in the blog tour for Amber Smith’s Something Like Gravity. I’m thrilled to be able to share my thoughts on this beautifully written and moving story that explores how people deal with grief and loss and how they process traumatic events, as well as what it feels like to fall in love for the first time. The story follows Chris, a teenage boy who has just come out as transgender, and Maia, who is trying to come to terms with the unexpected death of her older sister. Both Chris and Maia are having a hard time – Chris because his mother is struggling to accept him as transgender and because he was violently attacked at school by some of his classmates, and Maia because she has basically lost her own identity and sense of self. To all of her classmates, she’s now just the little sister of the girl who died. When Chris leaves town and moves in with his Aunt Isobel for the summer, who is coincidentally Maia’s neighbor, Chris and Maia meet. Maia doesn’t know Chris is transgender or that he was attacked, and Chris doesn’t know about Maia’s sister, so as they become acquainted, they see each other as a chance for a fresh start. Can a relationship survive though, friendship or otherwise, if it begins based on secrets and lies?


5 REASONS WHY SOMETHING LIKE GRAVITY SHOULD BE ON YOUR SUMMER READING LIST

I really enjoyed reading Something Like Gravity. I love how Smith crafted this story in a way that tackles very serious and meaningful topics, but also has a light side that focuses on summer vacation and falling in love. It has everything I love in a contemporary read. I could go on for days, but instead, I’m just going to share a few highlights as to why I think Something Like Gravity should be on your summer reading list.

1. Authentic characters experiencing realistic and relatable struggles. Both Chris and Maia are characters that I felt tremendous sympathy for. I think the author does a wonderful job of authentically conveying the emotions they each must be feeling as they deal with their own internal conflicts. Chris is dealing with not only what happened to him at school, but also his mother’s reaction to him coming out as transgender, not to mention everything that’s going through his own head about the fact that he is transgender. Maia is grieving for her sister and struggling to figure out how to move forward. Her parents have pretty much shut down as well, so Maia is just in an all around unhealthy environment. Both Chris and Maia are having to rediscover who they are and that journey of self-discovery is one I think we can all relate to.

2. Complicated family dynamics. I have a thing for books that focus on families, especially if those families come across as real. And for me, real is messy and complicated. Both Chris and Maia’s families score high marks in the messy and complicated department. Chris is caught between a father who is supportive of him and a mother who isn’t, and because both of them have become so overprotective ever since his attack, he is practically suffocating at home. His way out is cool Aunt Isobel who supports him no matter what, even if it causes friction between her and Chris’ mother. Watching the intricacies of those relationships play out was fascinating, as was Maia’s situation, where not only is everyone in her home grieving over the death of her sister, but apparently her parents are actually divorced but still living under the same roof, so it’s tension city all the way around, with Maia trapped in the middle.

3. Meaningful themes. “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” This quote from Anais Nin is a running theme throughout the book and it just really resonated with me because it’s true on so many levels. It means that for better or worse, our experiences color and shape everything we see. And it also means that no two people see things exactly the same. I think it’s an important message for everyone, to help them understand themselves and to understand others.

4. Transgender representation. I think this is actually the first book I’ve read that has transgender representation in it. I enjoy diverse reads so I was pleased to see a transgender teen as a main character in the story. Not being transgender myself, I can’t speak as to how accurate the representation is, but it felt like the author handled it in a respectful and sensitive way.

5. Romance/First Love. I’m not really a romantic at heart, but I did really like the romance in this book. There’s just something about falling in love for the first time, especially a summer romance, that makes me smile and I liked the chemistry between Maia and Chris. They were sweet together and I was really rooting for them to be able to open up to one another about what they’re hiding so that they had a chance for a long-term relationship.


Final Thoughts: Amber Smith’s Something Like Gravity is a heartfelt story about love, loss, and finding oneself. I thought it was a beautiful story and would definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys contemporary romances, coming of age stories, and diverse reads. If you enjoyed Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda and The Upside of Unrequited, I think you would enjoy Something Like Gravity as well.

A story of dealing with trauma and figuring out who you are after life has changed, this book has a powerful message of hope and healing.

What Fed My Addiction:

Chris's realistic family conflict.
Chris's mother has a hard time accepting Chris's transition. For one thing, she has lots of fears about her son's safety out in the world, especially after Chris was already attacked before he even came out as trans. I know lots of people are going to see the mom as a horrible person because she didn't immediately embrace Chris's transition. But I'm going to get real honest here and tell you that when my daughter came out to us as trans, it wasn't simple, even if I wanted it to be. And people take different amounts of time to wrap their heads around a gender transition. It's hard not to fear this world and want your kid to have the easiest time they can in life. And it's hard to let go of the perceptions and misconceptions you have about your kid's life and future that you didn't even consciously know you'd formed until you realize they're completely wrong. I had an easier time accepting this shift than my husband did, but I still probably made a million mistakes--parenting is hard! I thought this book very realistically portrayed the struggle that Chris's parents had with his transition and the conflict that created between them and their son. But it also showed a family who loves each other and portrayed hope for understanding and reconciliation.

Maia's struggles with dealing with her sister's death.
Maia's journey is as much a part of the story as Chris's is. She hasn't come to terms with her sister's sudden death--she's left with no sense of closure, especially since she and her sister hadn't been on the best of terms when she died. This felt very realistic to me. I felt for Maia and understood why she had trouble grieving or moving on, and I also felt for her when she struggled with what she perceived as others' expectations about how she should feel.

The romance.
I thought Maia and Chris were sweet together, and I loved that while they were each processing their own issues, they had each other. But the book wasn't about love conquering all---they had to process those issues separately too, which was a message I appreciated.

Chris's aunt.
And Maia's complicated family. Okay, I have to throw out some love for Chris's aunt, who I LOVED! And then Maia's very messy family situation (divorced parents who still live in the same house) was a really interesting dynamic that intrigued me.

What Left Me Hungry for More:

A terrible lie?
The main conflict in Chris and Maia's relationship ends up being a lie that Maia tells, but I'll admit that I was a little confused about why the lie was such a big deal in the first place. I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't condone lying to the person you're in a relationship with, but I didn't find this particular lie to be all that earth-shattering, and it wasn't central to their relationship, so I had a hard time understanding Chris's reaction to it.

Some of the trans rep?
I wasn't sure how I felt about the fact that Chris came out as trans right after being attacked---it maybe sends a weird message that being attacked as a girl is what made Chris decide he was a boy? I don't think that was the author's intention and it's certainly not stated that way, but I do think it's an unfortunate correlation that could be made. Also, I was surprised that Chris completely passes 100% of the time. That seems perhaps a bit unrealistic.

Overall, I enjoyed this book, even with a few flaws. It's wonderful to see transgender characters being represented. Chris's story may not accurately reflect every trans person's story (every story is very different), but I do think that this could definitely be a decent representation of someone's story. I do recommend that you read this book alongside other similar books written by trans authors, though, to get a fuller picture.

***Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher via Fantastic Flying Book Tours in exchange for an honest review. No other compensation was given and all opinions are my own.***

From the moment the meet Maia and Chris click. Both having been through hardships for different reasons they have let themselves becoming fairly isolated socially. The moment they meet is also interesting as Chris almost runs Maia over with his car. Despite the awkward beginning, however, they start to build a tentative friendship. At first, they keep their biggest secrets to themselves. Maybe not wanting to scare the other one off or out of fear of being judged but as time goes on they grow closer.

This novel was definitely the sweet romance that it was advertised to be with a bit of a twist due to the fact that Chris is transgender. I think the subject matter was handled well by the author and did not take away from the book in any way. I think that stories like this one need to be told more often because for every story out in the world there are people who can identify with it. It’s important that folks from all walks of life are represented in the media in a kind and loving way. It is what makes us all different that makes us beautiful.