Book review - This Train is Being Held

Title: This Train is Being Held
Author: Ismee Williams
Genre: realistic fiction
Similar books: Field Notes On Love by Jennifer E Smith
                      You Before Anyone Else by Julie Cross and Mark Perini
Rating:

deeper than I was expecting

Summary (provided by publisher): Alex is a baseball player. A great one. His papi is pushing him to go pro, but Alex maybe wants to be a poet. Not that Papi would understand or allow that.
Isa is a dancer. She'd love to go pro, if only her Havana-born mom weren't dead set against it...just like she's dead set against her daughter falling for a Latino. And Isa's privileged private-school life—with her dad losing his job and her older brother struggling with mental illness—is falling apart. Not that she'd ever tell that to Alex.
Fate—and the New York City subway—bring Alex and Isa together. Is it enough to keep them together when they need each other most?

My opinion: In many ways, this book is like a more complex version of movies like  Save the Last Dance. It has the elements standard to a lot of teen fiction: privileged girl meets underprivileged streetwise boy; privileged teen adjusting to a change in circumstance; initial romance complicated by a series of misunderstandings; even the parent pressured athlete with the soul of a poet. That's a lot o cliche in one book. I have to wonder, though, if Williams is doing this intentionally. Because a lot of these cliches are just masking deeper issues. Isa is seen as a rich white girl, but has Cuban roots and family secrets. Alex is Dominican, his background obvious to even casual observers and the source of constant judgement. They are both somewhat hindered by other peoples perceptions and judgements. We're dealing with a lot of carefully orchestrated masks, hiding issues that feel too big to explain or even deal with. Williams has taken a shallow notion and granted it a surprising amount of depth. As a teen romance it's end result is fairly predictable but the journey is far more engaging than I had expected.
Advanced Reader Copy provided by NetGalley.