A thoughtful love letter from father to son. It's a respectful look as well at how one. parent viewed his transgender child. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

I thought this book was interesting, but could not find my footing nor was I really engaged. Perhaps it's just a consequence of the time, but I have to DNF this one all the same. Nevertheless, thanks for allowing me to read in advance — I really love the cover!

Soar, Adam, Soar is definitely a beautiful book. Written as a tribute to his inspirational son, the author excels in doing just that. Rick reminisces on Adam's youth, when he was still known as Rebecca. Rick takes us through Adam's trials with epilepsy, and his struggles with being transgender. It's a strong and powerful story.

This book is definitely worth reading. Adam accomplished so much in his short life. His fathers love for him shines from every page.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

What a touching tribute by a loving father to his fascinating and resilient son. This book almost felt co-written as Adam's social media posts were incorporated into Prashaw's narrative. Adam's posts provided a unique insight into his struggles with growing up and epilepsy, and his journey to transitioning. No doubt Prashaw loved and respected his son, and gave him as much freedom as possible (given his medical condition) to become the wonderful person he was in his short life. Adam's life isn't sugar-coated, and I appreciated the realness with which Prashaw relates his story.

Thank netgally, the author for an Advanced Copy of this book. I really enjoyed this book. It's well worth reading

I was thrilled to death for the opportunity to read an ARC of his new book. I was drawn in from the first chapter and could hardly put it down! Highly recommend!

This is a very personal account of a family event that has much wider implications. I'd like to say it was told well, but I can't, because it was disjointed and disorganized and sometimes hard to keep track of where we were at, but even so I consider it a worthy read because it's an important story. It's also a very tragic story, and while all deaths like this are heart-breaking, it's hard to become emotionally involved when it's not someone with whom I am personally familiar. I can become emotionally moved by the greater story though, of endless people who are persecuted and brutalized for their perceived 'non-conformance' to so-called 'norms' of one sort or another, in this case, gender.

Adam Prashaw was not brutalized, as some have been, with violence and rejection by peers or parents, but he was knocked around by two things: the system, which does not make it easy for a person born in the wrong body to correct that situation, and by the fact that Adam also suffered from epilepsy, and it was this which killed him at an appallingly young age by dint of the fact that he drowned in a hot tub in the few minutes while his friends were absent, succumbing to a seizure which everyone thought and hoped had been cured by brain surgery only a few months before.

Obviously there are lessons to be learned here, such as that epilepsy, like alcoholism, is never really cured and we must be vigilant over those who have it to prevent accidents like this one from happening, but the lesson that's taught here is that of making the most of your life, even if that life is destined to be short - something none of us can know except in the hindsight of those we leave behind.

There are teaching opportunities which I felt were missed in this book, and this was one issue I had with it. One of them was the tragic accident at the hot tub. Another, for example was where at one point we were introduced to two women who would help Adam through this transition: "Pivotal this year are his first meetings with his counsellor, Nichelle Bradley, and his doctor, Jennifer Douek." These are both females and I felt it would have been nice to know more about how such people become attached to these cases, and whether gender plays any part, and if so, why?

If Adam were transitioning from male to female (the opposite of what he was actually doing) would these have been men, or is the gender simply random - this is just how the counsellor and doctor happened to be? Does it matter? A little talk about that would have been interesting to me, because I think it could matter if these particular two professions are overwhelmingly populated with gender-bias. On the other hand, if it makes no difference, it would have been nice to hear that.

I have to note again that this is a very personal account, so perhaps it's expecting too much, but to me such things are interesting and I felt that a little more commentary would have enriched the reading, but this wasn't the only thing which caught my attention. The book is far more about feelings and relationships, and a father's experiences than ever it is about the practical trials and experiences of a person going through gender reassignment, so perhaps we shouldn't expect a tutorial. It's also about how little time Adam got to enjoy the new him. Being a parent myself, I don't ever want to know what it's like to lose a child, so I can appreciate what this parent/author went through. I just wish it had been easier to follow and that Amazon's crappy Kindle conversion process had not mangled the text as it reliably does.

The book was available for review in PDF format which was not mangled at all, but which was too small to read on my phone, which is where I read most of my ebook material. I don't fault an author for that except in that it cannot be repeated often enough that if you're going to publish a Kindle ebook, you cannot have anything fancy in the text at all - not even italics, because sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, Amazon will frag your text. Italics generally do fine except that the last character, if it's something like a lowercase 'd' or an exclamation point, will be beheaded by the non-italic text following it. Guaranteed every time. An author needs to check for how much Amazon has screwed-up their text in the ebook version, because I have seen this repeatedly in Amazon books, and not just in advance review copies. Errors are rife in Kindle format, which is one reason I refuse to publish through Amazon.

In this particular case, text inserts/boxes were rendered part of the text, cutting into the middle of sentences in the main body of the book, so those are a complete non-no, as are drop-caps and other fancy additions. Images can be problematical. Amazon made a jigsaw out of the front cover image in this book and I've seen that before, but the images inside the book were generally fine except that they did not always merge into the text properly, leaving a largely blank screen here and there, either preceding the picture or in its wake.

Here's a quote that illustrates this text julienne à la Amazon: "The doctors wanted to completely remove the piece, which Bekkaa October 22, 2012 "The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience." -Eleanor Roosevelt appeared to be triggering..." Good luck making sense of that. It incorporates the page header and a text box (I believe) all in one. Never use page headers or page numbering for an Amazon ebook. I've never seen this kind of mangling in any reading app other than Amazon's crappy Kindle app.
Here's a footnote in the middle of a sentence: "There were mood 1. Now known as a 'focal impaired awareness seizures,' these start in one area of the brain and negatively affect sensory perception. Other symptoms may include automatic behaviour. Such seizures generally last between one and two minutes. swings, too..." Here's another example of the garbling: "a work colleague, and her partner, David White, a United ChurchAdam minister; they happened to be visiting at the time.July 25, 2015 The chaplain prays for Adam with us. He touchThunderstorm!!! es my son." It's character coleslaw, and Amazon does it best.

The author is quite religious and it's commendable he had such an open attitude towards Adam's predicament. Far too many believers are entirely reprehensible in their position, but not this one. I didn't find his references to religion annoying though, being an unbeliever myself. At one point I read, "Adam is surrounded by love, God's and ours. This is all good." This was shortly before he was declared dead without ever recovering consciousness after his drowning. Clearly, as Al Pacino's character declares in Devil's Advocate 'God is an absentee landlord'.

Later there was another quote along these lines: "Everything that led to the day that Adam died and the day that John received his heart were destined to be, whether I like that or not ... It was meant to be." And the author adds, "I agree. A divine plan." I don't see anything divine in killing a young man so others can have his body parts. If God really wanted to do his job, he would not have let Adam drown, and he would have miraculously cured the heart and kidneys of those whose lives were improved through Adam's premature death and commendable organ donation. Otherwise what's the point of having a god if he does nothing to help, prayers are not answered, and evil all-too-often prevails? I personally have no time for a worthless god like that.

The authors comments were at times hard to understand. I read at one point, "AS ADAM'S GENDER transition and epilepsy collide full force toward the end of 2015, there is a remarkable change in him. An adult is emerging, a guy with a stronger voice." Well, he's 22 years old at this point, so I am not sure what was going through the author's mind. I know there's that old sawhorse that a child is always a child to a parent no matter how old the 'child' actually is, but I have never felt that way with regard to my own offspring. I see nor reason for that attitude. At some point they grow up and it's insulting to keep reducing them to kids when they're teenagers or young adults. The author wrote later, that he did "hug a few kids whom I recognize. They are all 'kids' to me, although most, like Adam, are now adults." This was after fussing over getting Adam's name right - the male name not the female name he was assigned at birth along with the wrong body. It felt hypocritical to me.

But in context of the overall story, these felt like relatively minor beefs, and not that important in the grand scheme of the story the author was trying to convey, so I was willing to let that slide, and all in all I commend this as a worthy read and an important book even though I have to add that I've read clearer and more educational accounts of a gender transition than this one.

4* This made me cry, but possibly not for the reasons you might assume. A touching tale, part way through.

I'm a parent and so this book was bound to touch me. I didn't find the blurb entirely accurate, as I don't think I really 'saw' Rebecca or Adam whilst she/he was alive, because the tale seems to focus much more on the after, and about the child/YA introduced to us through his father's memories of events. That's not a criticism per se, just that I'd expected to have read more about what Rebecca/Adam was really like, with more 'in the moment' stuff. But, it was told with love and admiration, and that's not something that all parents of trans kids might do. I found it lovely that both parents were fully accepting of Rebecca/Adam's exploration of herself/himself and supportive of her/his decisions, though some of them might have found them with their fingers crossed a time or few.

What made me cry in this is reading the letter from the recipient of Adam's heart. That touched me hugely, and I cried more than once. For someone to appreciate the gift of life like that, to want to say a heartfelt (no pun intended) thank you to those who helped make the gift possible, and how decent a person the recipient turned out to be, was humbling. It made me realise that I take my own health for granted to a degree and that it's time, at 49, for me to look around, take stock and make some decisions re health and older age.

I think the book may perhaps have been tempered/muted, emotions wise, for Adam's dad to be able to tell the tale, for readers to be able to read and appreciate it, but it felt a little subdued. It's a private situation made willingly public by Adam's dad in writing this book, and yes, I do appreciate that, but at times I felt that it skimmed things rather than went into them in depth. I'd have liked to know more about Adam's thoughts that turned into actions; at times it felt as if his parents either didn't want to question him, or thought that he was going through a phase. This may be a slight spoiler, apologies, but to enter into a 'marriage' ceremony at such a young age, when a young child is involved, and for it to end shortly after, feels like a situation that did need a little tough love, or at least a 'let's sit down and talk about this', not with the aim of trying to change Adam's mind, but as supportive, caring, 'been there, done it, alone again' parents.

Adam himself seemed a lot immature in some ways, but mature in others. I'm not sure he came across as a free spirit, but more as someone preoccupied with his own self, needs, wants, etc, which isn't that unusual for teens, from what I hear/read in pop culture. I have a son not that much older than Adam, and he's very different and an only child who's extremely close to both parents, and therefore as a family we didn't go through any of what Adam's dad portrays, so maybe I am being judgemental. If so, I don't mean to, but Adam's parents seemed rather out of his life in many ways, and yet his dad being his friend on social media, felt a little too much in his life in a way. Sorry if this is contradictory, but I'm also a Brit, and therefore, maybe a little more reserved than the Prashaws?

I'm not sure I felt anything for Adam's mum, who seemed to be absent and yet not, his confidante and yet not, an unwitting creator of distance between Adam and his dad, and yet not. Was she present enough, post her divorce? Was Adam affected by their divorce and therefore rushed into life decisions? Whilst I'm glad that Adam was taken seriously by those involved medically in his transition, I did feel that everything seemed to be rushed and as if Adam was racing to a finish line. Yes, it's probably easy for me to say, having grown up a het female without a doubt about her gender and sexuality, but I have a few trans friends and things for them have progressed a lot slower, with one choosing to detransition after 5 years. And, it also makes me wonder, as did the posts about death that came to light after Adam's passing, if he had a premonition that his time on earth would be short?

Overall, this is an interesting read, but I expected it to be more emotional and loving and moving. I just didn't get that feeling until after Adam's passing, and only once the heart recipient came into Adam's parents' lives. I don't think I felt that I knew, knew Adam, because he didn't shine through; I think for me, as I said above, the tale felt rather muted.

ARC courtesy of the author, Dundurn and NetGalley, for my reading pleasure.