I'm wondering if anyone has taken a train on this specific route? My searches on Renfe, RailEurope,and the Trainline are all routing me through Madrid. The most direct route would be along the coast, through Barcelona, but I'm not being given this route as a choice. I'm wondering if I should book the option through Madrid, or if I should book two separate trips - Valencia to Barcelona and Barcelona to Girona.
thanks for any advice.

IMO, you should book two separate trips.

Trainlilne shows tons of train connections along the coats, at least until end Feburary.
In any cse it wouldn't make sense to buy 2 tickets for the trough train EM1152.
For the moment. there are no offers for trains from Valencia to Tarragona and further North after February 28th.
I would just wait a bit or take a ALSA bus.

i now start all searches with rome2rio, then check the details. R2R is geeting pretty good now. RailEurope is designed to take money off North Amricans and is just not a very good tool

thank you. That's helpful. I searched earlier dates and do see one direct train on Mondays (the day we will be traveling). Interesting that it also says there are only 3 direct trains per week. I will wait and search again closer to the date.

We took the train from Valencia to Girona last spring. I don’t believe there’s a direct route. We took a high speed train from Valencia to Barcelona, then made an easy change at Sants for the high speed train to Girona. We were in Girona by early afternoon. If the trains aren’t showing yet I would say just wait, but viewing a closer date should give you a good idea of the schedule. As I recall there were lots of choices of times once they became available.

Thank you. I appreciate the first hand info.