Author: Catherine Ryan Hyde (author of Pay It Forward)
BUY NOW: Chasing Windmills
Grade: 81/100
This is a love story in the unlikeliest of circumstances. Sebastian, a 17 year old home schooled New York shut-in, has his growth as a person constantly stifled by his overbearing father whom has allowed him zero social activity since his mother died ten years ago. Nightly, after his father takes his sleeping pill, Sebastian leaves the house to ride the subway cars, his only escape from his father’s iron fist.
Maria, a young 22 year old mother of two, is in an abusive relationship with the father of her children. She has just lost her job and knows that if she tells her boyfriend that it will result in a very bad beating. So, for weeks, when her boyfriend (Carl) would expect her to be working the night shift, she is riding the subways to safely pass the time.
Maria and Sebastian find each other on the subway, their eyes meet, paralyzed by mutual fear, they don’t speak, but each night they return to that subway hoping to see each other. What happens next is the most romantic of love stories; however, each of them has a secret they are hiding, and each of them is fearful of what will happen once you know who finds out.
This novel doesn’t offer any new insight into love or relationships, but it is an extremely warm story that is likely to inspire one to get out there and find love, or re-affirm the love you’ve already found.
“How do I get over this loss?” Sebastian asks his older and only friend, Delilah, after thinking that he’d lost his first love, Maria.
“I didn’t say you would get over it. It’s not exactly something that you get over. It’s like those steel spikes they drive into trees. If the tree doesn’t die, it just sort of grows around it. You sort of make the pain and loss a part of you. You learn how to live around it after a while.”
That says it all about first loves and loss.
