Review – The Vinyl Underground

I am thrilled to be hosting a spot on the The Vinyl Underground Blog Tour hosted by TBR & Beyond Tours!

Check out my post below!

About the Book

Genre: Young Adult Contemporary
Publishing date: March 20th, 2020

Content Warning: Racial violence and harassment, grief, drug use, underage drinking

Synopsis:

Dig it.

During the tumultuous year of 1968, four teens are drawn together: Ronnie Bingham, who is grieving his brother’s death in Vietnam; Milo, Ronnie’s bookish best friend; “Ramrod,” a star athlete who is secretly avoiding the draft; and Hana, the new girl, a half-Japanese badass rock-n-roller whose presence doesn’t sit well with their segregated high school.

The four outcasts find sanctuary in “The Vinyl Underground,” a record club where they spin music, joke, debate, and escape the stifling norms of their small southern town. But Ronnie’s eighteenth birthday is looming. Together, they hatch a plan to keep Ronnie from being drafted. But when a horrific act of racial-charged violence rocks the gang to their core, they decide it’s time for an epic act of rebellion.

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Review

Wow. Just wow. This book is powerful. It’s important that we never forget the events of war, whether before your time or not, and this is a book that should be read.

This book is well written with characters fleshed out and dynamic. I enjoyed the friendship of these four teens. It is a time for transition. Ronnie is trying to avoid being drafted and sent to Vietnam to what he feels is his death. Hana and Milo become victims of a traumatic crime just for being who they are. So much is happening on top of dealing with grief and racial discrimination. The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. is one of the events that takes place at the same time as this book and the different ways people dealt with it were impactful. Especially with it being set in the south.

The setting is well developed and all the references of the time period put your right into the story. I wanted to go out to a record store and build my own Vinyl Underground playlist. I think this book is important for young people to read even now as we see parallels in our society to the events that took place in 1968. You’d think times would have changed but reading this made me realize just how backwards society seems to be in present day.

This one hits hard and I 100% recommend it. I picked up the audiobook as well and recommend that format as it was well produced and the narration really brought the characters to life.

Rob Rufus is a musician and writer living in Nashville. His band, Blacklist Royals, has released two full-length albums and played in sixteen countries over the past five years. His new project, The Bad Signs, released their first single in 2015. He is the author of Die Young with Me.

Website | Twitter | Goodreads

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