Translate My Heart

I have a fascination for road-trip stories, well, travel stories mostly. There is such a romanticism to a road-trip story: the wide open road with wind whipping through your hair as you speed off towards adventure and possibilities. I always love that kind of image. So it was a foregone conclusion that I would read this book eventually. However, since I love this author's previous book, Hold Still, I kicked it up the to-read pile.Unlike Hold Still,The Disenchantments focuses on a point of view of a male narrator, Colby. Colby who finds himself struggling with the question "what's next?" when best friend Bev drops their long standing plans to wander Europe for a year. I normally do not read a lot of books featuring the male pov, but the struggles Colby faces about his friendship with Bev and his potential future makes him a narrator I could easily connect to. I think most of us, in our lifetimes, face the question of "what's next?". That is what emotionally connected me to the story. I am in the same place Colby was in at the beginning of the story; struggling to find out what's next in life. But it is not only Colby that makes The Disenchantments a wonderful story. It's the whole complex cast of characters from sullen, mysterious Bev to vibrant pink haired Meg to organized Alexa with her notebook of potential careers and all the people they meet along the way. The relationships between them are so fraught with tension, laughter, conflict and everything in between and Nina LaCour portrays it beautifully. The characters come so alive that I feel like I could bump into them on the street or see them hanging out in a cafe.Additionally, the themes help makes this book resonates. Some of themes The Disenchantments touches on deal with the meaning of friendship, the possibilities of choice, the power of art and music, and the potential of the future. Themes that most people can in one shape or another connect with. A vibrant, radiant book that I cannot recommend enough.