A couple of influential readers recommended this book, so I requested it on NetGalley.
I almost DNFd this one at 33 percent. It's well written and each word - sentence - chapter is quite lovely, but I found I just didn't care.

I think this book is trying to address Big Issues, such as mental health, money and class, race, but it brushes very lightly over the top of these. In some cases it seems to fall into stereotypes. Maybe I'm just naive, of maybe every single person in New York hates everyone from the Dominican republic. Or maybe its not because Alex is brown, maybe it's because he's a big loud youth, carrying on big and loud with his big loud friends.
There were other things that irritated me - like the untranslated Spanish. I mean, I could figure it out in context, but that's not really how I like to read books. Mainly though, it irritated me that they kept on bumping into each other on the train. New York is a big city and the subway runs every two to ten minutes (yes, I googled it). The chances of two people repeatedly being in the same subway car - and not on the way to work or school, but at random times on the weekend, seems slim to me.
But maybe maybe real problem is that the two main characters' love seemed very slight. And they did that romance novel thing were the female lead has just one friend.

So, with all these criticisms, why three stars? Well, this is YA, and I'm not the target audience. Back when I was less wrinkly and cynical I probably would have liked this more. Also, on the weekend I just sat on the couch and read, so it was sort of pleasant, if annoying.

As always, I thank NetGalley and the publishers for the e-Arc, in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC. This Train Is Being Held sounded like my kind of read. I like teen romance and  the cover really drew my eye, but also it seemed like it had deeper underlying themes of diversity. This Train Is Being Held is a romance, yes, but it also discusses ethnicity and how we’re perceived because of it. 

I really liked both of Isa and Alex. Isa is a dancer, dealing with her the expectations of her family and their drama. Her mother wants her to be a doctor, but she wants to dance. Alex is a baseball player, whose dad rests a lot of his hopes and dreams on him. Meanwhile, he wants to go to college and write poetry, not be drafted right out of high school.

A large part of this book is that they don’t belong together because they’re from two different worlds: Isa from the Upper East Side and Alex from the Bronx. However, they do share a common cultural heritage: they’re both Latinx.  Isa being blonde has an easy time though, because she can pass for white.  People don’t expect her to speak Spanish or have a Cuban mother. Alex is Dominican-American and people treat him differently because of how he looks.

I found it interesting to see how Alex is treated better when he’s in a baseball uniform, as if that means he’s worth something more because he has a talent. Yet people still look at him and Isa together and decide that they don’t belong.

The part I found hard to follow was the timeline. I didn't realize at first that this was taking place over the course of two years. I didn't pay attention to the dates at the beginning and got a little confused. Reading it on my Kindle makes it hard to flip back and forth to re-check dates. I think it could have been shorter; but it did really help develop the characters and show how people change over time. 

I thought Isa and Alex’s relationship was really cute! I also loved their friendships and how those developed along with their relationship. Everything felt very established and realistic, as if I were reading about actual people’s lives.

I think This Train Is Being Held will resonate with many teens who haven't yet found themselves in YA lit.  The romance was cute, the friendships are real and the dynamics of diversity are well pronounced.  A good read!

I requested This Train Is Being Held because the cover and summary seemed cute. However, I soon realized that this was a much deeper story than I was expecting. This Train Is Being Held is a romance, yes, but it also discusses ethnicity and how we’re perceived because of it.

I really liked both of our protagonists’ narratives. Isa is a dancer, dealing with her father losing his job and her mother and brother who both have bipolar disorder. (I couldn’t tell you the quality of the rep for this, so I would love to share someone else’s review.) Her mother wants her to be a doctor, but she wants to dance. Alex is a baseball player, whose dad went pro for a season and a half and now rests everything on Alex’s future. Meanwhile, he wants to go to college and write poetry, not be drafted right out of high school.

A large part of this book is that they don’t belong together because they’re from two different worlds: Isa from the Upper East Side and Alex from the Bronx. However, they do share a common cultural heritage: they’re both Latinx. But Isa is blonde and white-passing, so people don’t expect her to speak Spanish or have a Cuban mother. Alex is Dominican-American and people treat him differently because he looks it.

It was interesting to read about how Alex is treated better when he’s in a baseball uniform, as if that means he’s worth something more because he has a talent. Yet people still look at him and Isa together and decide that they don’t belong.

Anyways, they meet on the train over the course of two years, which led to a different pacing than I was expecting. I usually like books centered around events, but sometimes this one dragged. I think narratively, it could have been shorter; however, this made the character development very real to me. People change, but only after time passes.

I thought Isa and Alex’s relationship was really cute! I also loved both of their friendships. Everything felt very established and realistic, as if I were reading about actual people’s lives.

Overall, This Train Is Being Held was a very real read, one that talks about race and how it affects how others see us. The characters were incredibly developed; the romance was cute. The pacing was just not for me.

As is often the case, the first thing that captured my attention when I saw This Train is Being Held is the cover. I’m just a little bit obsessed with it as I really love the style and the whimsical feeling it conveys. I was also really excited by the summary of the book. 

For the most part, I enjoyed this book. Before I get to all the things I liked about it, however, I’ll just mention the main reason this book is a 3.5 star read for me rather than a 5/5 and it’s purely because of my own reading experience. I just wasn’t being observant enough and didn’t read the dates at the beginning of each chapter correctly, so I ended up so confused by the timeline of the book. In my head, there is no possible way that Isa and Alex’s story transverses over a three year period. For me,  it felt more like 1 year at the most. The dates aside, there were just no specific plot details or anything like that that really gave me the impression their relationship was building over 3 years. The way their accidental meetings on the subway and the way the plot developed just felt to me like it was happening over a year. Again, perhaps that’s my fault for not reading the dates correctly, but it just really changed my overall reading experience.

It also may be the reason why I felt like Isa and Alex’s relationship bloomed so much more quickly than I expected. My perception of the story weaving over a year makes more sense to me as the time frame for a teenage love story like this, but it also made me feel that Isa and Alex’s story was a little too insta-love for my tastes and because their whole relationship was largely based on subway trips, it didn’t always have the romantic depth I love. Again, largely my own fault due to how I read the book, so I feel that someone who paid more attention to the time frame details would have had a completely different experience reading it!

In saying all of that, there were so many good things in this book that I enjoyed. Though I couldn’t quite get behind Isa and Alex’s relationship for perhaps the first half of the book, I still found their scenes together really adorable and was rooting for them both to be together by the end of everything. One of the most important things for me in a contemporary book like this one, is not only the strength of the couple as they are together but also the characters individually.

I found myself liking Isa more and more as the story developed, as I really liked how the different sides of her life clashed and how everything seemed to fall apart around her as she tried to be this shining, bright star of strength and happiness. Isa’s determination to be strong for her loved ones and to not show how she was completely falling apart herself was so relatable. Sure, I did get really frustrated with her when she literally didn’t tell her friends or Alex anything that was going on in her life with her family and her brother’s mental illness, but the way she kept that all in and tried to deal with it on her own is just something I know so many people do and can learn from. I loved Isa’s bubbly, daring personality and how layered she was as a person. Her relationship with her best friend Chrissy was a really great depiction of friendship. Same goes with her relationship with her brother, Merrit. I also felt Merrit’s bipolar disorder was dealt with with a fantastic level of sensitivity and realism. While I really liked the family issues Isa had to deal with, I really didn’t understand Isa’s mum at all (I thought she was a real piece work), and felt I wanted more development in Isa’s relationship with her.

Alex’s character introduced so much culture that I really enjoyed, what with his Dominican background, his relationship with his papi and mami, and the way he always felt judged by the world due to being discriminated against and how his being a baseball player was very much something that gave him purpose and also provided him with a safety net. I loved how Alex, friends and family (and also Isa, who also has a Latino background) spoke Spanish throughout the book as that really added a level of language and detail to the book. I also found myself so hungry whenever Alex and his friends/family were eating home cooked food as I am such a foodie. Overall, I thought Alex was such a well-rounded character and I loved his poetry and the way that was incorporated within the narrative. Similarly like with Isa’s Mum, I didn’t really like Alex’s papi. I understood him a little more once I knew more about his background, but for most of the story, I just couldn’t stand him and the way he treated his sons. I wanted more from Alex’s best friend Bryan and Danny, though I did like how Danny’s story line gave some insight into gangs as part of the cultural contexts of life in the Bronx . Most of all, I loved Alex’s relationship with his little brother Robi, who might just be my favourite character in this book. He was so adorable and intuitive!

Though I personally had some issues with the timeline and pacing of the story, I overall thought this book was a really lovely story about two characters finding their way and their own true happiness. There were so many strong secondary characters and layers of meaning and culture throughout the story.  I thought the ending was quite the unpredictable bang and made me come out of the story feeling satisfied.  I loved the whimsical nature of the writing and how it really captured all those special moments we have with loved ones that become memories to treasure.

Four stars

I enjoyed many aspects of this novel and will absolutely recommend it as a great option for my YA Literature students who are interested in reading contemporary romance. 

My overarching thoughts on this work are here: Though I do think the train scenes could be economized a bit, the narrative flows smoothly overall. Alex is a much more intriguing character because his inner turmoil, experiences with racism in daily life, and complex relationship with his father are explored in more depth than any aspect of Isa. There are some confounding moments where Isa is concerned. She is a risk-taker, as seen in some of her exhibitionist public performances and her ease at falling in love on the subway, but she cannot manage to talk about ANY of the struggles plaguing her in relation to her immediate family. I wish this latter issue had been more fully developed at the end of the novel. Her guilt and shame over her brother's mental health and resulting struggles needs further attention as well. Somewhere along the way, an adult needs to tell her - and a narrator needs to share with readers - that Isa is not responsible for Merritt and that this translates to all people in similar circumstances. I appreciate the notes on mental health in the Acknowledgements, but there is a missed opportunity for someone - even Isa herself - to realize the scope of what she takes on and that this is not appropriate.

Despite minor issues with Isa's character development and a wish to see Merritt's struggles handled a bit more explicitly, this is an engaging teen romance that I think will please the vast majority of its readers.

A quick Ayala read I couldn't put down. Told in dual perspectives, you get a clear understanding of both main characters and why they work together. Everything about this mms for a great modern, diverse contemporary YA read.

This book was fun but didn't feel well thought out. I felt like the characters were underdeveloped and kind of cliche. Some of the scenes felt too long and others felt really fast, so that I was either bored or had no idea what was happening. I felt like the treatment of bipolar disorder was kind of demonizing, especially in the mother's character, and a lot of her actions didn't feel realistically justified by her BPD.

Absolutely loved this! A character lead story with protagonists that you can believe in and root for!

What a wonderful book! The characters are what makes This Train is Being Held so special. I'm so sad that the book has ended and I have to say goodbye to them.

I like this selection a lot! Reading the description initially, I thought for sure it was gonna be insta-love or at least a relatively fluffy book. In reality, we got fleshed out, realistically flawed characters who develop a real connection. Are some parts a little far fetched? Sure, but not to the extent that they take away from the overall story. The author addresses some very real issues (race; mental health; honesty in relationships) in ways that seemed more nuanced than many YA novels. The cover is also very aesthetically pleasing so that helps too!

I would absolutely recommend this to teens at my library, as well as any other YA readers.

This story hit close to home and hurt my heart.
Being a latina and living in the south makes you feel some type of way. 
Isa and Alex's story is one that isn't hard to believe. It's a love story in the same vein as West Side Story and I couldnt help but connect the two and fall in love all over again. This felt like a modern retelling of West Side Story, with the roles flipped. Alex was by far my favorite character, he had so much depth to his personality and I enjoyed his perspective. Both the harshness of his reality and the love he has for Isa. 
Other than being a love story, the underlying themes of racism and mental health were present throughout the entirety of the book. Sometimes taking the lead in the plot and helping move the story forward. Well done, eye opening *I hope* and beautiful.

I really wanted to like this book, and to me it fell a little bit flat. The writing was good I just couldn't connect to the characters as much as I wanted to!