A little-more-than-a-year in the life.Isa and Alex have a pretty typical meet-cute: Alex holds the door open for her on the subway so the train won't leave without herwhich is good, because she has a very important dance audition to get to. Alex, meanwhile, has regular baseball practices not just with his team, but with his demanding father, who played for the Yankees for a year and a half before a drug addiction set him back. They represent two very different New Yorks: Isa's well-off family is downsizing after her financier father lost his job and is also trying to keep her mother's and older brother's mental illnesses from tearing the family apart. Alex attends public school in Washington Heights and splits his time between his divorced parents; his mother works in a nursing home. What Alex's parents and friends don't know is that he's a poet. Soon he's writing poems for Isa and leaving them on the train car where at first they just keep happening to run into each other before they eventually meet on purpose, away from their parents and clashing friend groups. Blonde Isa is half Cuban and half white American; Alex is Dominican. Code-switching and bilingualism are realistically placed in dialogue throughout the text, without italics to disrupt the reader's flow. Anxieties over mental health, socio-economics, and police and gang violence effectively complicate and deepen the narrative.Heartfelt and meaty. (Realistic fiction. 13-18) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Gr 9 Up--When Isa, a dance student in New York City, is surreptiously recorded on the subway, Alex steps between her and the creep. They strike up a conversation, mainly about Latin music and dance. Both of them sense a strong connection, but at Isa's stop, the doors open, she jumps off, and is gone. Over the ensuing weeks, the two periodically run into each other on the subway and their connection grows. Alex's family is from the Dominican Republic. Isa's mom was born in Havana, but the two families couldn't be more different. Alex lives in Brooklyn, some of his friends run with a gang, and he tenses up every time he sees a cop. Isa's family lives on Park Avenue and she attends a private school. Even so, they start to fall for each other, though they each begin to harbor a fear that the other is hiding something. Narration by Gary Tiedemann and Frankie Corzo bring to life this tender love story that touches on the joys and challenges of Latinx culture in the U.S. as well as the emotional strain of mental illness on teens. VERDICT Recommend to fans of YA romance.--Lisa E. Hubler, Charles F. Brush H.S., Lyndhurst, OH

In a charming #OwnVoices novel by Williams (Water in May), a ballet dancer and a rising baseball star find common ground and romance via the New York City subway. Upper East Sider Isa, who attends a private school, pursues ballet despite the disapproval of her tempestuous Cuban mother, a perpetual board member who's struggling with her husband's layoff. Dominican Alex, who attends school in Washington Heights and travels between his divorced parents, would rather write poetry than play ball, but his former-Yankee father is pushing him to go professional. Both teens are intensely driven, and both have stormy home lives they'd rather keep private. Yet despite their avowals that neither has time for a relationship, their random subway encounters, which begin when Alex holds the door for Isa, evolve into planned time together. When Isa's stability at home begins to dissolve, her attempts to keep up a strong front drive a wedge between them until they find themselves thrown together in a crisis. Demanding parents, experiences of racism, mental-health challenges, gang violence, and the fallout of a lost job blend seamlessly with moments of poetry to create a realistic and complex romance. Ages 13--up. (Feb.)

Alex Rosario plays ball so people, especially his papi, will see and respect him, but secretly he writes poetry. Isabelle Warren dances because she loves being in the spotlight, but it helps that dancing gives her a break from her tumultuous homelife. From beginning to end, told in the course of about a year, this story explores overcoming appearances and prejudices and the ways loving and taking care of yourself and others is a choice as well as a responsibility. Isa and Alex are from completely different walks of life, even though both of them are children of immigrants, speak Spanish, and live in the same city. Williams addresses these themes in a modern context and doesn't shy away from Alex's justified fear of police officers, Isa's privilege, the dangers of (and alternatives to) running with gangs, how mental health struggles affect families, and the power of sharing the truth on social media. It's a captivating, classic story about two people who ""shouldn't"" be together, and readers will be cheering them on until its satisfying conclusion.--Kristina Pino Copyright 2019 Booklist