goodreads | The Distance From Me to You

Title: The Distance From Me to You
Author: Marina Gessner
Genre: YA
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 339
Date read: October, 2017

McKenna Berney is a lucky girl. She has a loving family and has been accepted to college for the fall. But McKenna has a different goal in mind: much to the chagrin of her parents, she defers her college acceptance to hike the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia with her best friend. And when her friend backs out, McKenna is determined to go through with the dangerous trip on her own. While on the Trail, she meets Sam. Having skipped out on an abusive dad and quit school, Sam has found a brief respite on the Trail, where everyone’s a drifter, at least temporarily.

Despite lives headed in opposite directions, McKenna and Sam fall in love on an emotionally charged journey of dizzying highs and devastating lows. When their punch-drunk love leads them off the trail, McKenna has to persevere in a way she never thought possible to beat the odds or risk both their lives.

The first 200 pages I absolutely LOVED! It was exactly the mix of YA and travelogue I had hoped for when buying it, and while it was light on exact details about the Appalachian Trail it still had enough of the travelogue atmosphere to satisfy me.

Unfortunately at about the 70% mark the author reminded me that she was indeed writing fiction and not a travelogue, and therefore had to introduce a conflict of some kind. While I understand the reasoning, I really wish she hadn't. The book didn't need it, and it changed the vibe of the last part of the book. So in the end I'll give it 5 stars for the first two thirds and 3 stars for the last.

And now I really want to get my hands on a "real" travelogue of the Appalachian Trail (other than "A Walk in the Woods" which I've already read.)