Far From You

“I give him the only thing I can: the cold, hard truth. The one that’ll rewrite every memory he has—of him and me, her and me, the two of them, all three of us: “It’ll always be Mina.”

This is a lovely and painful story of loss, recovery and revenge. Told in a juxtaposition of past and present this novel delves into Sophie’s tragic loss of her best friend Mina who was murdered right in front of her one night out in the woods. Spurned by the need for revenge and trying to unravel the mystery of who killed her Sophie begins to piece together the truth of that night.

What I loved:
-It catches your attention immediately!
-The perfect balance of past and present. Each chapter switched between the two, with the present diving into show more a mystery while the past told us why we should care. It was perfect because it kept up a quick intriguing pace while also not drowning us in an information dump explaining what led up to this. By the end I was so invested in Sophie’s and Mina’s story that it made Mina’s death all the more heartbreaking.
-Bisexual main character. I’m a sucker for representation so you know I had to mention it! Plus, Sophie and Mina loved each other so much and that just needs to be said even if it makes me want to cry. show less

I plowed through this book. It hit me in all of the right places and I'm still reeling from it a bit. I just... it was achingly beautiful, and painful, and it made me so angry and gutted me. I fell absolutely in love with Mina, and Sophie, and all of the characters. God, it just, it hurt. Because it's tragic, you know going in that Mina is dead and it's not going to be okay. But the telling of it, of their lives together, and Sophie's life after, picking up the pieces, is done so well. So, so well. If this is what the author can pull out in her debut novel, fucking hell, she's gonna wreak me with anything else she comes up with. I read this one, on my kindle, and I might just have to go buy a physical copy. I need to hold this book in show more my hands.

I can tell it's gonna have many re-reads in its future.

Fuck. show less

Just take all the stars, Far From You. I finished this book this morning, and I still can't stop thinking about it! Books with real LBGQT characters are few and far between. Books where that person is a main character, and you can honestly feel their pain through the words? Even fewer and farther between. I just want to hug this book. I want to buy a ton of copies and just pass them out to the masses. I really enjoyed this.

“But my heart isn't simple or straightforward. It's a complicated mess of wants and needs, boys and girls: soft, rough, and everything in between, an ever-shifting precipice from which to fall.”

That quote only highlights how well Sophie's bi-sexuality is handled in Far From You. This is a topic that is often show more misrepresented, but I can honestly say that I felt like Tess Sharpe handled it like a pro. Not only that, but she managed to weave in dealing with addiction, the power of friendship, what it's like to become reliant on someone, and feeling misunderstood. Every word had a purpose. Every piece of this book had something to say. Yet, it never became too much. It was never heavy handed. I found myself sitting right next to Sophie, and all I wanted to do was reach out and hold her hand.

Now, there is also a mystery here. One that, in my opinion, is perfectly meshed into the story. Contrary to what normally happens when I read mystery/thriller books, I didn't see the ending coming. That made me happy. It also made me really sad, but that was more because Sophie had already been through so much. I just wanted happiness for her. I know that some readers didn't like the mystery aspect. You might not. Still, I can't deny that I thought it made for a great addition to this book. It gave Tess Sharpe a great excuse to keep flashing back to Sophie and Mina's younger days, and it was a beautiful thing.

In case you couldn't already tell, I fell desperately in love with this book. When I start reading at night, and actually pass out trying to keep reading, I know that I've fallen hard. It was Sophie, it was Trev, it was Mina, all keeping me reading well into the night. Such a great cast of characters, in an equally amazing book. show less

"Mina likes to play with fire.
But I'm the one who gets burned."

What a well done, wonderful love story mixed with self discovery, perseverance, pain and mystery. I love that this book wasn't any one thing. It was so many pieces that all fit seamlessly together.

Sophie is a great character. She knows so many things about herself but is also still searching to understand more. There are dark corners of herself she hasn't examined yet and this book is part of her sorting through it.

Mina is her best friend. They push and pull, their conflict was always offset with their love and respect for each other. But Mina is gone and Sophie must know why. In her struggle to find the answers, she will rediscover herself, her friendship and even friends show more she thought she'd lost along the way. I hung on every word and absolutely loved this one. show less

Someone needs to make this book into a movie, is what I’m going to start with.

If you look this book up online, you’ll immediately find that it has a pretty good rating on Goodreads. I don’t blame them, really – I would have given it a very high rating myself too! I started reading this on Christmas Eve Eve, and finished it on the 27th of December, literally holding myself awake on some nights with the promise of ‘just one more chapter’. It helps that this book is written in a style that mirrors my own writing style, but what really grabbed me what was the story line.

Every good book, I believe, starts in media res. No good book starts you in the beginning and keeps you going from there, building up the story. There are some show more good books that do that, but those are usually the ones that need volumes upon volumes to tell you the story, building it up as it goes along. If we’re talking about a one-novel affair here, then the story never starts in the beginning, but right in the middle of the action, where it’s most likely to grab your attention.

This story starts with our main character, Sophie, telling us about how she’s almost died twice. The first time, she was in a car accident that left her crippled for life. The second time, she witnessed her best friend killed by a lone gunman. Sophie is a drug addict, who has been addicted to pain killers since the accident that left her crippled and unable to walk without a limp (and, in extreme cases, without a cane). She is clean, and finds herself counting the hours since the last time she had a hit of Oxy, convincing herself that she’s made too much progress to regress into the vicious cycle now. But Sophie’s best friend, Mina, was killed right in front of her, and everybody thinks that it’s Sophie fault, as Sophie was found at the scene of the crime with pills in her jacket pocket. Everybody seems to think that she took Mina with her to buy drugs, and the drug deal went wrong, resulting in Mina’s death. Nobody will believe that Sophie had been clean for six months prior to Mina getting killed, and that Mina would never let her buy drugs and start the cycle all over again. And so, the minute that Sophie leaves rehab, she’s on a quest to find out who really killed her best friend, and why.

This story is 70% murder mystery, 20% drug addiction, and 10% grief. Sophie never had the time to properly grieve the death of her best friend, and has trouble accepting that she’s gone forever. The story, completely told through first person POV, gives us flashbacks into Sophie’s friendship with Mina, and how it grew and became the strong bond it is when the story picks up. Sophie and Mina’s friendship is a pure spectacle of teenage love – two friends who rely on each other so completely, who have no idea what they’d do without the other, and who are finally faced with the unthinkable when one of them dies and they finally have to do what they’ve dreaded the most. Sophie’s emotions and anger over Mina’s death are so real that it’s very hard to not feel some kind of emotion while reading this book.

What I liked about this book as well is the way that Sharpe had me guessing up until the end about who the murderer was. I went through various different answers in my head before finally reaching the end, and by the time it was revealed, I found myself saying ‘This is fucked up’ to myself quite a bit as I finished the book. The only part of the Goodreads reviews that I disagree with, in fact, are that the ending was predictable, which it isn’t. I was expecting somebody completely different to be the murderer, not the person it turned out to be.

All in all, I give this book a final rating of 5/5. It’s got a brilliant story line, one that makes you confront your worst nightmare if you had to place you and your best friend as Sophie and Mina. It also includes subtle hints at romance that aren’t the ‘be all, end all’ of the story, which is nice. And, like I said, the ending is rather unpredictable! show less

In my opinion, this is how you do a young adult mystery.

The narrator feels real, a teenage girl who is flawed and thus so very human, fighting for strength and answers, a character I was rooting for from the very first pages.

The mystery was gripping, and the twists and turns really surprising. I didn't call them at all, which is always fun.

I also really liked the way Sharpe played with the concept of romance. It didn't feel like a cliche, and perfectly complemented the mystery and the narrator's personal growth.

If you've been looking for a good young adult mystery to read, I would definitely recommend this book.

Four stars because I finally, finally saw myself in a book. Plot and characterwise, it was horrid and deserved a scathing, one-star review, but--I'm in a book. I wrote on Goodreads:
I cried because I finally saw myself. The main character walks like me.
Her friends help her. I cried. My friends never did when I was her age. I know how to ask for the accommodations I need, in ways that people understand, as an adult. It took -years- to figure this out. I grew up in an ableist household, and I live in an ableist society.
Her parents and she argue a ton and I laughed. I argued often with my ableist parents about my physical therapy--parts of it hurt. I told them this, and they made me do the "it hurts" parts extra, and yelled at me.

This book show more is not a murder mystery. It's a coming-of-age, but the author knew it wouldn't sell if she just left it as that. The main character's disability is due to a car accident. Mine is not. But it fit. It so, so fit. I finally saw me.
The book was well-written, and I was so fixated on seeing myself that I ignored what else the book was about. I don't care. show less