Everything Leads to You

Praise for Everything Leads to You:

“But underneath the privilege surges real pain, longing, and feeling in a way that makes it easy to imagine this novel as a film.” 
–*Publishers Weekly, *starred review

"This sensitive, multifaceted novel creates an authentic portrayal of the ups and downs of life. . . . An absorbing Hollywood read." –Kirkus Reviews

"This is summer love for the ages."
–Booklist

Accolades for The Disenchantments:

YALSA Best Books for Young Adults (2013); Kirkus Best Teen Book of 2012; A Publishers Weekly Best Summer Book

"This is about the inside and outside of characters, the past and future of their lives—and it is astonishing." –Booklist, starred review

"Quietly compelling...well rendered, bittersweet and hopeful." –Los Angeles Times 

"A rich tapestry that will make readers confident that they are in the hands of a master storyteller. ... Hauntingly beautiful." –Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Each roadtripper has his or her own artistic way of chronicling the individual journeys they are on together, and that introspection draws the reader into this intimate novel.” –NPR.org

"LaCour skillfully draws connections between art and life as she delves into the heart of her characters." –Publishers Weekly, starred review

“LaCour’s writing style is laid-back, low key, and totally on point.” –VOYA, starred review

"Enchanting in its depiction of the cusp of young disenchantment, this realistic novel will hit home with many thoughtful YAs.” –School Library Journal, starred review

Accolades for Hold Still:

2010 William C. Morris Honor Book; YALSA Best Books for Young Adults (2010); Publishers Weekly Flying Start

"Hold Still may be the truest depiction of the aching, gaping hole left in the wake of a suicide that I've ever read. But it's anything but depressing and gloomy—it’s also about the tender shoots of new relationships that grow unexpectedly out of tragedy. A haunting and hopeful book about loss, love, and redeption." –Gayle Forman, author of If I Stay

"A beautifully written, gently moving account of a long goodbye that will resonate with anyone who has ever had to let go before they were ready." –Sara Zarr, author of Once Was Lost 

"LaCour makes an impressive debut with an emotionally charged young adult novel about friendship and loss." –Publishers Weekly, starred review

"A poignant and beautifully crafted depiction about the grief that a person goes through after a profound loss.... A fresh voice to the world of young adult literature."* -–VOYA, *starred review
 

Autorentext
Nina LaCour is the author of the award-winning Hold Still and widely acclaimed The Disenchantments. Formerly a bookseller and high school English teacher, she now writes and parents full time. A San Francisco Bay Area native, Nina lives with her family in Oakland, California.

Klappentext

**From the award-winning author of We Are Okay comes a beautiful coming-of-age novel where a talented young set designer embarks on a quest to unravel the secrets of a legendary movie star.

“This sensitive, multifaceted novel creates an authentic portrayal of the ups and downs of life.”—Kirkus Reviews

“This is summer love for the ages.”—Booklist

“This tenderly wrought romance is as much an homage to the power of movies as it is to true love.”—The Bulletin
**
Nothing’s more epic than falling in love.**

**Emi Price has planned a sensational summer. She has her dream job, as a movie design intern, and the key to her brother’s wonderful apartment, which he entrusted to her for two months as a graduation gift. She just needs to fulfill his one condition: that something great—something epic—take place there while he’s gone. If she can avoid falling back into her on-again-off-again relationship with her ex-girlfriend, all will be perfect.

Then she and her best friend discover a mysterious letter at the estate sale of a Hollywood film icon. They can’t resist chasing down the loose ends of his hidden life, and suddenly Emi’s plans all feel a bit looser as well . . .

Because the acting legend’s decades-old secret is about to stretch Emi’s understanding of family, acceptance, and romance.

Leseprobe
This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected proof.

Copyright © 2014 by Nina LaCour 

Chapter One

Five texts are waiting for me when I get out of my English final. One is from Charlotte saying she finished early and decided to meet up with our boss, so she’ll see me at Toby’s house later. One is from Toby, saying, 7 p.m.: Don’t forget! And three are from Morgan.

I don’t read those yet.

I head off campus and a few blocks over to where I parked my car in an attempt to avoid the daily after-school gridlock. But of course the driver’s side lock won’t unlock when I turn the key, so I have to go around the passenger side and open the door and climb across the seat to pull up the other lock and shut the passenger door and go around to the driver’s side again—and by the time I’m through with that twenty-second process, the cars are already backed up at the light. So I inch into the road and pull out my phone and read what Morgan wrote.

You okay?

R u coming to set later?

I miss you.

I don’t write back. I am going straight to set, but not to see her. I need to measure the space between a piano and a bookshelf to see if the music stand I found on Abbot Kinney Boulevard yesterday will make things look too crowded. The music stand is beautiful. So beautiful, in fact, that if it doesn’t fit I will find a new bookshelf, or rearrange the furniture entirely, because this is exactly what I would have in my practice room if I knew how to play an instrument. And if I could afford a nine-hundred-dollar music stand.

As the light turns and I roll my car through the intersection, I’m trying to ignore Morgan’s texts and think only of the music stand. This music stand is a miracle. It’s exactly what I didn’t even know I was looking for. The part that holds the sheet music is this perfect oxidized green. When I texted my boss a picture of the stand she wrote back, Fucking amazing!!!! An expletive and four exclamation marks. And when I texted Morgan to tell her that this was the last time I would allow myself to get dumped by her, that breaking up and getting back together six times was already insane, and there was absolutely no way I would take her back a seventh, she replied with, I don’t know what to do! Indecisive and only mildly emphatic. So typical.

But the music stand, the music stand.

Turning right onto La Cienega, my phone rings and it’s Charlotte.

“You need to come here,” she says.

“Where?”

“Ginger took me to an estate sale.”

“A good one?”

“You just have to come.”

“Someone famous?”

“Yes,” she says.

“Sounds fun but I need to measure for that music stand.”

“Emi,” she says. “Trust me. You need to come here now.”

So I scribble down the address, make a U-turn, and head toward the Hollywood Hills. I drive up Sunset and roll down all the windows, partly because the air-conditioning doesn’t work and it’s ninety degrees, but mostly because I’m driving past palm trees and hundreds of beauty parlors and taco trucks and doughnut shops and clothing stores and nightclubs, and I like to take it all in and think a…