A review by sbelasco40
The Disenchantments by Nina LaCour

4.0

When I was thirteen, my family made a two week long road trip up the California coastline, starting in San Francisco. It was the first time I'd ever been to California, and it was the kind of trip that changed my life forever - all I wanted, from that point forth, was to make the West Coast my home. THE DISENCHANTMENTS is at its most powerful and compelling when it captures the aimless, thrilling quality of youthful road trips and the scattered, disjointed beauty of Northern California. It's the least compelling when it tries to capture the will-they/won't-they romance of its two main protagonists, childhood best friends Bev and Colby. If you're looking for an epic romantic journey, this is not it - Bev is too nebulous of a character, plagued by unattainable-mystery-girl-syndrome, to make the pairing a driving force behind the narrative - but if you want a story of self-discovery housed within some great description of place, art and music? This is for you.