What you’re in for:
- Sweet and sappy gays
- Long-distance dating after your crush slides into your DMs
- Latinx Mexican-American protagonist and Vietnamese-American love interest
- Coming out narrative
- Trigger warnings for parental abuse, physical abuse and homophobia
Review:
“I— I’m glad you’re here right now. That you’re safe. And alive. And I know that you have all the willpower and determination to get through anything in life, Jules. But I hope you know now that you can tell me anything. Always. Everyone needs somebody, and I want to be your somebody. I want to be your person. And I want you to be mine.”
Be right back, I’m in my feels.
After a rocky start to the book where I wasn’t quite sure whether this was going to be heavy or fluffy, Fifteen Hundred Miles from the Sun turned out to be what I’d call a cleansing reading experience for anyone who’s on the LGBTQIAP+ spectrum. Fifteen Hundred Miles from the Sun is a story about coming out, falling in love for the first time and acting on it, and figuring out how to be yourself when there are outside forces telling you to do everything but that. Villa captures the good and the bad about coming out and perfectly balances the sad with the fluffy content.
My favourite part of this book was, of course, what will be known as the internet romance of a lifetime. It was just so enamouring to read about this digital dating between Jules and Mat because it reminded me not only of the friends I’ve made in the LGBTQIAP+ community online, but also of that feeling when you find someone online who seems to speak your language, the way you become dependent on them and how hard it can be when they cut you off out of the blue. Jules and Mat’s relationship—from the insta-love to the slowly falling in love for real part to finally meeting officially for the first time in person—is rocky and all-encompassing, complex and deceptively easy at times and it perfectly captures first love in my opinion. Things are messy and Villa doesn’t shy away from showing the advantages and struggles that come with dating someone who lives hours away from you. Thank God for the internet, am I right?
Besides the whirlwind romance that will take readers by storm, there is also the found family trope in this book and I loved Jules’ group of friends. They’re all so diverse and have their own struggles, whether it’s about love or their plans for the future and I enjoyed how they kept teasing Jules about his relationship but also (for the most part) being supportive about it.
Also, can we take a second to talk about how supportive, genuinely kind and strong-willed Mat is? He’s basically the poster boy of what you want your first boyfriend to be. I loved all the discussions he and Jules had about coming and being out to the world, how family can both protect you and make you feel like you’re alone, and most of all, how Mat fought for Jules time and again. There are so many moments where I wanted to clutch the book to my chest and just smile at the sheer adorableness of it all. Steadfast and honest and so dreamy, I can see readers falling in love with Jules and Mat all over the world.
One of the hardest aspects of this book to stomach is the relationship between Jules and his father. For the longest time, Jules has kept being gay to himself because his father doesn’t accept “that lifestyle” and it is incredibly sad yet impactful to read about how Jules adjusts his performance around his father to escape physical and verbal abuse. When his father eventually learns about Jules and kicks him out, even going so far as blackmailing him to keep him on the straight path, my heart was breaking for Jules and any kid who has ever experienced this sort of shunning. While Jules’ and Mat’s families are largely supportive and believe that love is love, Jules’ father’s reaction was jarringly realistic and definitely not for the faint of heart. I think what I love most about this book is that Jules takes his time to come to terms with what his father’s ignorance means for their relationship in the future and that he realises that blood does not always mean family. It’s one of the hardest decisions to make to put yourself first even at the cost of a love you thought— and hoped—to be unconditional, and Villa portrays this with such a careful hand that it stays with you even after you close the book.
An homage to finding your tribe on the interwebs, Villa’s authentically tender debut Fifteen Hundred Miles from the Sun brings a cleansing gay happily-ever-after to any reader who’s ever found their soulmate online— only to find out they live half a world away.
Fifteen Hundred Miles from the Sun is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of June 8th 2021.
Will you be picking up Fifteen Hundred Miles from the Sun? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis | Goodreads
Julián Luna has a plan for his life: Graduate. Get into UCLA. And have the chance to move away from Corpus Christi, Texas, and the suffocating expectations of others that have forced Jules into an inauthentic life.
Then in one reckless moment, with one impulsive tweet, his plans for a low-key nine months are thrown—literally—out the closet. The downside: the whole world knows, and Jules has to prepare for rejection. The upside: Jules now has the opportunity to be his real self.
Then Mat, a cute, empathetic Twitter crush from Los Angeles, slides into Jules’s DMs. Jules can tell him anything. Mat makes the world seem conquerable. But when Jules’s fears about coming out come true, the person he needs most is fifteen hundred miles away. Jules has to face them alone.
Jules accidentally propelled himself into the life he’s always dreamed of. And now that he’s in control of it, what he does next is up to him.
