This Train Is Being Held by Ismee Williams

This Train Is Being Held

by Ismee Williams

Family and class differences threaten the love of two teens in this contemporary YA romance

When private school student Isabelle Warren first meets Dominican-American Alex Rosario on the 1 train, she remembers his green eyes and gentlemanly behavior. He remembers her long ballet dancer’s legs and untroubled happiness, something he feels belongs to all rich kids. As the two grow closer in and out of the subway, Isabelle learns of Alex’s father, who is hell-bent on Alex being a contender for the major leagues despite Alex’s desire to go to college and become a poet. Alex learns about Isabelle’s Havana-born mother, Eliza, a woman with a prejudice against Latino men, who pressures her daughter to stay away from him. When Isabelle’s father loses his job and her older brother struggles with his mental health, her relationship with Alex falters. But fate—and the 1 train—throw them together when Isabelle needs him the most.

Reviewed by readingwithwrin on

4 of 5 stars

Share
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an e-arc in exchange for my honest review.

Trigger warning: One of the side characters attempts suicide, gang violence is present, police racial profiling of a character.

This Train Is Being Held is told in dual perspectives of Isa a dancer and Alex a baseball player. Both have very different lives, passions, and responsibilities yet they see each other often on the train going to and from there after school activities.
While seeing each other every so often they decided to finally talk to one another and over time gain friendship and then a relationship.
We get to see both of their lives and how they live and their families and while they both are very different you can still feel the love in both of there families and how they just want the best for Isa and Alex and for them to excel and become successful adults.
On the opposite side though we have one of them being pushed towards their activity becoming the only thing they do, and the other is being pushed to give up the activity to focus on becoming a doctor.

Overall I loved this book. It covers so many different things in a realistic way that has you feeling all the feels for the characters and rooting for them to succeded. One of the things that stuck out to me throughout this story is even though the two didn’t get to see each other very often they still cared and made the most of the time they did have together. In so many young adult novels the love aspect of the story becomes the main focus and everything else gets thrown aside, while in this story it was very present, but the characters were still focused on themselves. Family, and friendships, and passions were also a priority and the main focus of the characters.
Another part of this story I enjoyed was how the divide between things was present and addressed. It was very realistic and showed how you don’t always realize things are happening to those you love until you talk about it.
We also get to see mental health from a family member’s perspective and how it affects them while also seeing how it affects the person with the illness.
I’m looking forward to reading more by this author in the future.

Last modified on

Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 30 January, 2020: Finished reading
  • 30 January, 2020: Reviewed