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3.73 AVERAGE
3.73 AVERAGE
I love books that follow multiple characters, especially ones that have intense interests in hobbies. Isa and Alex were great to read from. I really connected to Isa since I took ballet for fifteen years and it was a huge part of my life. I enjoyed seeing how focused they were on their futures.
I thought their meet cute was adorable. Their whole love story made me smile and feel giddy inside. I like that they faced serious issues within their relationship and had very important conversations.
I wasn’t a fan of the judgmental side characters, but I think that’s the point. They added a lot to the story and made the book very down to earth. Overall I’m a huge fan of this book and will be reading more in the future by this author.
I thought their meet cute was adorable. Their whole love story made me smile and feel giddy inside. I like that they faced serious issues within their relationship and had very important conversations.
I wasn’t a fan of the judgmental side characters, but I think that’s the point. They added a lot to the story and made the book very down to earth. Overall I’m a huge fan of this book and will be reading more in the future by this author.
I loved this book. I loved that it was about choices and finding yourself and family and how to care for them even when things are harder than you ever thought, and how to rely on people and lean on them even when that feels impossible.
emotional
reflective
In the first 50 pages, Williams convinced me to care so much for Isa and Alex, who alternate first-person perspectives in chapters with one main setting: the NYC subway. The dialogue feels real and is smartly written. Difficult topics like racial profiling, mental health, and classism are engaged rather well and elaborated with grace and complexity. There is also a beautiful celebration of Hispanic and Latinx families. I found myself grinning many times throughout the book and rooting for their growth as individuals and, eventually, as a couple.
Rating: 4 out of 5 train stops.
Rating: 4 out of 5 train stops.
All right, look. I know that I have limited patience and an ever-growing boredom with straight romances. I already knew this and I continue to acknowledge this as I continue to get charmed by pretty covers and get annoyed by the number of non-problematic queer romances that I have to dig for. And let’s not talk about how sick I am about all queer romances being compared to Becky Albertalli; that’s another rant for another time that’s more fitting than this particular time where straight romance made me want to brain myself. Anyway.
Funny thing is, I wanted to like this book. I liked the concept. Am I aware that it’s wildly unrealistic and probably a little weird to fall in love with someone you met like twice on a train by chance? Yes. Did I care? Nah. Because it was fun to ignore my own reality and responsibilities! But I am both extremely underwhelmed and actually slightly peeved by this book because as someone that enjoys some miscommunication, sometimes even non-communication, for the sake of angst, this shit was just wild and frustrating as fuck. Because not only this but these characters were just awful to each other.
But hey, instead of writing a proper and coherent review, let’s make a bullet point list because I have nothing better to do with my time!
**NOT SPOILER FREE**
• It is a bold (and questionable of epic proportions) choice to have a female character throw some internalized misogyny out there for the sake of showing the readers how the love interest is a Good Feminist upon their first meeting and by choice, I did not mean a good one.
• It is also a bold (bold, not good) choice to make the aforementioned female character commit borderline sexual harassment to said Good Feminist Love Interest and briefly acknowledge that it would never be okay if a man did it and then have her apologize later which doesn’t, in any way, make up for the fact that she did it?
• Good Feminist Love Interest defaults to a girl that he knows is into him when he and The One break up (because it wouldn’t be a good book with poor communication without a good break-up from both sides for different reasons so make no mistake, there are two (2), COUNT ‘EM, break-ups technically) and then when shit hits the fan—as it do—it’s never really dealt with or apologized for. In fact, it’s kind of swept under the rug.
• LIKE THE RACISM AND POLICE BRUTALITY CLIMAX?????
• I’m not kidding. This book spends a good 95% clearly building up to something with foreshadowing of one of Alex’s best friends being in a gang and Alex clearly having anxiety and discomfort about police and at the end, when Isa and Alex are doing their stupid hetero tango of non-communication simply for the sake of dragging everything out, there’s a confrontation with the rival gang and the police assaulting Alex upon assuming he was part of it. This? This is not dealt with beyond “so Danny got out and is going to college and oh yeah, Alex is in therapy.” For giving it so much weight, it sure was tossed out the window real quick for the sake of Isa and Alex’s stupid romance.
• And I have no personal experience with the Dominican rep (obviously, as you could mistake me for a piece of printer paper) and only some personal experience with bipolar but something didn’t vibe and I don’t know what to tell you.
• My verdict? The author tried to cram way too much angst from different sources into one thing and it ended up being a disaster.
Here’s the thing, though. I didn’t hate this book. It kept me entertained enough; I did finish it which is either telling that it wasn’t so awful that I needed to catapult it into space or I’m a masochist, I don’t know. The writing wasn’t anything special and kind of almost read like a Wattpad fic in that weirdly specific things were overly detailed (like honestly, I didn’t care that much about every technical move Isa did and I didn’t care about the process of Alex eating a taco with his buds on the subway), but it’s whatever. Concept? Fun. Execution? Lackluster, a little exasperating in basically everything, I squinted a lot, I’d give a lukewarm D- so it’s fine. I guess.
Would I recommend this? I really have no idea. I’ve seen good reviews and I’ve also seen bad ones. The way the romance starts is fun, but there’s a lot of other infuriating elements and how they’re handled that can be hard to swallow for people so I’m gonna leave this one at: my opinion is entirely subjective and maybe you’ll love this, so go for it. Do what makes you happy.
Funny thing is, I wanted to like this book. I liked the concept. Am I aware that it’s wildly unrealistic and probably a little weird to fall in love with someone you met like twice on a train by chance? Yes. Did I care? Nah. Because it was fun to ignore my own reality and responsibilities! But I am both extremely underwhelmed and actually slightly peeved by this book because as someone that enjoys some miscommunication, sometimes even non-communication, for the sake of angst, this shit was just wild and frustrating as fuck. Because not only this but these characters were just awful to each other.
But hey, instead of writing a proper and coherent review, let’s make a bullet point list because I have nothing better to do with my time!
**NOT SPOILER FREE**
• It is a bold (and questionable of epic proportions) choice to have a female character throw some internalized misogyny out there for the sake of showing the readers how the love interest is a Good Feminist upon their first meeting and by choice, I did not mean a good one.
• It is also a bold (bold, not good) choice to make the aforementioned female character commit borderline sexual harassment to said Good Feminist Love Interest and briefly acknowledge that it would never be okay if a man did it and then have her apologize later which doesn’t, in any way, make up for the fact that she did it?
• Good Feminist Love Interest defaults to a girl that he knows is into him when he and The One break up (because it wouldn’t be a good book with poor communication without a good break-up from both sides for different reasons so make no mistake, there are two (2), COUNT ‘EM, break-ups technically) and then when shit hits the fan—as it do—it’s never really dealt with or apologized for. In fact, it’s kind of swept under the rug.
• LIKE THE RACISM AND POLICE BRUTALITY CLIMAX?????
• I’m not kidding. This book spends a good 95% clearly building up to something with foreshadowing of one of Alex’s best friends being in a gang and Alex clearly having anxiety and discomfort about police and at the end, when Isa and Alex are doing their stupid hetero tango of non-communication simply for the sake of dragging everything out, there’s a confrontation with the rival gang and the police assaulting Alex upon assuming he was part of it. This? This is not dealt with beyond “so Danny got out and is going to college and oh yeah, Alex is in therapy.” For giving it so much weight, it sure was tossed out the window real quick for the sake of Isa and Alex’s stupid romance.
• And I have no personal experience with the Dominican rep (obviously, as you could mistake me for a piece of printer paper) and only some personal experience with bipolar but something didn’t vibe and I don’t know what to tell you.
• My verdict? The author tried to cram way too much angst from different sources into one thing and it ended up being a disaster.
Here’s the thing, though. I didn’t hate this book. It kept me entertained enough; I did finish it which is either telling that it wasn’t so awful that I needed to catapult it into space or I’m a masochist, I don’t know. The writing wasn’t anything special and kind of almost read like a Wattpad fic in that weirdly specific things were overly detailed (like honestly, I didn’t care that much about every technical move Isa did and I didn’t care about the process of Alex eating a taco with his buds on the subway), but it’s whatever. Concept? Fun. Execution? Lackluster, a little exasperating in basically everything, I squinted a lot, I’d give a lukewarm D- so it’s fine. I guess.
Would I recommend this? I really have no idea. I’ve seen good reviews and I’ve also seen bad ones. The way the romance starts is fun, but there’s a lot of other infuriating elements and how they’re handled that can be hard to swallow for people so I’m gonna leave this one at: my opinion is entirely subjective and maybe you’ll love this, so go for it. Do what makes you happy.
✨ Rep: half Cuban mc, Dominican American mc/li, POC side characters, side characters with mental illness (bipolar disorder)
!! CWs: racism, suicidal ideation, suicide attempt (off-page, side character)