REVIEW: The Disenchantments by Nina LaCour @DuttonBooks @nina_lacour

Colby and Bev have a long-standing pact: graduate, hit the road with Bev’s band, and then spend the year wandering around Europe. But moments after the tour kicks off, Bev makes a shocking announcement: she’s abandoning their plans – and Colby – to start college in the fall.

But the show must go on and The Disenchantments weave through the Pacific Northwest, playing in small towns and dingy venues, while roadie- Colby struggles to deal with Bev’s already-growing distance and the most important question of all: what’s next?

Morris Award–finalist Nina LaCour draws together the beauty and influences of music and art to brilliantly capture a group of friends on the brink of the rest of their lives.

About the Author

Nina LaCour (www.ninalacour.com) is a high school English teacher and former bookseller. She is the author of the award-winning Hold Still. A San Francisco Bay Area native, Nina lives in Oakland, California. 

 Details

• Reading level: Ages 14 and up
• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Juvenile (February 16, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525422196
• ISBN-13: 978-0525422198

SOURCE:  Around the World ARC Tours

MY THOUGHTS

LOVED IT

Colby is in love with his best friend Bev who is in a band called The Disenchantments. They have made plans to tour at the end of high school before moving on with their adult lives, to college and for Colby to visit his mother now living in France and separated from his father.  His father is a musician that at one time was pretty well known.  Bev had gone along with Colby’s plans to visit his mother and then backpack through out Europe before deciding what to do with the rest of theirs lives.  So when Bev tells Colby she is accepted into art school, his life unravels and he must now make plans on his own.

The story takes place while the band is winding it’s way from San Francisco to Seattle and Portland, stopping here and there to play at coffee houses, bars, rec centers or where ever they can find a place.  They meet some interesting people along the way but what really grabbed me was that Colby’s mother is an artist and had painted the cover of his father best known work.  He finds a tattoo artist that has a picture of a man with the art work as a tattoo, so it becomes his quest to find the man and understand what made him get the tattoo.

The story winds around much like the path the band is taking in their travels, not straight and with no clear purpose except to get from one point to another and deposit one of the band members at her college.  There were parts that are a bit existentialist and really seemed to serve no purpose except to wonder why Bev isn’t honest with Colby and just goes along with him by agreeing they should go see his mom when she has been making other plans all along.  Overall, it is a great look at what happens to kids once they start becoming adults and how friends become disjointed once they leave their protected existence in high school.