Subway Love is a young adult love story. The two main characters are Jonas and Laura. Jonas is a budding photographer and carries his film camera around with him just about everywhere. When he spots a girl on the other side of the subway platform he takes her photo and then can’t stop thinking of her. He ends up showing up at the subway station over and over in hopes of finding her again. When they finally meet, he gets her Dad’s number from her – she doesn’t have a cell phone and she seems a bit confused as to what Facebook was. At first I wasn’t sure what year the book was set in – but Jonas seems to be all about technology (despite the film camera) and Facebook and emails, etc. Laura doesn’t seem to have a clue as to what he is talking about and even if she wasn’t allowed to have such things she should at least know what they are, right? Well, if you check the book out you’ll figure out just why Laura is clueless.
When I finished the book, I wasn’t sure quite what to make of it. It was a nice love story, different, but still an enjoyable one to read about with characters that you were rooting for (for the most part. Laura’s mom’s boyfriend Bruce we could all probably do without – but he is also an important piece to the story at the same time, even if he is an ass.) This book should have been a quick read but it took me 2 days to get into the first 1/4 of the book. Once things got moving though I read the next 1/2 in an evening and only stopped because I fell asleep. The last 1/4 I finished quickly the next morning to see how things would wrap up.
I also liked the concept of soul mates or “beshert” as explained in the book. It basically says that when you are born the trauma of birth makes you forget everything you knew about your soul mate but then you spend your life looking for them and once you find them, you know it is them.
I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review. I was not otherwise compensated.
About the Book
What if destiny leads you to your soul mate, but the laws of time conspire to keep you apart?
If her parents had never divorced, Laura wouldn’t have to live in the shadow of Bruce, her mom’s unpredictable boyfriend. Her mom wouldn’t say things like “Be groovy,” and Laura wouldn’t panic every weekend on the way to Dad’s Manhattan apartment. But when Laura spots a boy on a facing platform, lifting a camera to his face, looking right at her, Laura feels anything but afraid, and she can’t forget him. Jonas, meanwhile, thinks nonstop about the pretty hippie girl he glimpsed on the platform — trying to comprehend how she vanished, but mostly wondering whether he will see her again in a city of millions — and whether if he searches, he would have any chance of finding her. In a lyrical meditation on love, Nora Raleigh Baskin explores the soul’s ability to connect, and heal, outside the bounds of time and reason.