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Encanto: Nightmares and Sueños
Return to Casita where we find seventeen-year-old Bruno from Disney's hit animated film Encanto, where readers will finally learn what happened to make people never want to talk about him.
Fans will love this dark and mysterious young adult novel by Alex Segura, a NYT bestselling author who also wrote Poe Free Fall and Araña and Spider-Man 2099: Dark Tomorrow.
Seventeen-year-old Bruno has never really fit in with his family—why can’t he be as outgoing as his sister Pepa, or as friendly as his sister Julieta? Does he like being the awkward loaner who never seems to find where he can fit in? But it’s hard to be popular when you have the power to tell the future and people don’t always like what you are telling them. So Bruno devises an act, and begins to model the behavior he feels the town wants to see in a hero.
But is being dishonest to himself and others the right path to walk down in order to make friends, or is Bruno just kidding himself as he hides from his own destiny that threatens to destroy all he holds dear?
Fans will love this dark and mysterious young adult novel by Alex Segura, a NYT bestselling author who also wrote Poe Free Fall and Araña and Spider-Man 2099: Dark Tomorrow.
Seventeen-year-old Bruno has never really fit in with his family—why can’t he be as outgoing as his sister Pepa, or as friendly as his sister Julieta? Does he like being the awkward loaner who never seems to find where he can fit in? But it’s hard to be popular when you have the power to tell the future and people don’t always like what you are telling them. So Bruno devises an act, and begins to model the behavior he feels the town wants to see in a hero.
But is being dishonest to himself and others the right path to walk down in order to make friends, or is Bruno just kidding himself as he hides from his own destiny that threatens to destroy all he holds dear?
235 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 3, 2024
10 people are currently reading
14 people want to read
About the author
Alex Segura
274 books572 followersAlex Segura is the bestselling and award-winning author of Secret Identity, which The New York Times called “wittily original” and named an Editor’s Choice. NPR described the novel as “masterful” and The L.A. Times called it “a magnetic read.”
Secret Identity received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Booklist, was listed as one of the Best Mysteries of the Year by NPR, Kirkus, Booklist, LitReactor, Gizmodo, BOLO Books, and the South Florida Sun Sentinel, was nominated for the Anthony Award for Best Hardcover, the Lefty and Barry Awards for Best Novel, the Macavity Award for Best Mystery Novel, and won the LA Times Book Prize in the Mystery/Thriller category.
His upcoming work includes the YA superhero adventure Araña/Spider-Man 2099: Dark Tomorrow, the follow-up to Secret Identity, Alter Ego, and the sci-fi/espionage thriller, Dark Space (with Rob Hart). Alex is also the author of Star Wars Poe Dameron: Free Fall, the Anthony Award-nominated Pete Fernandez Miami Mystery series, and a number of comic books – including The Mysterious Micro-Face (in partnership with NPR), The Black Ghost, The Archies, The Dusk, The Awakened, Mara Llave – Keeper of Time, Blood Oath, stories featuring Marvel heroes the Avengers, Sunspot, White Tiger, Spider-Man and DC’s Superman, Sinestro, and The Question, to name a few.
His short story, “90 Miles” was included in The Best American Mystery and Suspense Stories for 2021 and won the Anthony Award for Best Short Story. Another short story,“Red Zone,” won the 2020 Anthony Award for Best Short Story.
Alex is also the co-creator of the Lethal Lit podcast, named one of the best fiction podcasts of 2018 by The New York Times.
A Miami native, he lives in New York with his wife and children.
Secret Identity received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Booklist, was listed as one of the Best Mysteries of the Year by NPR, Kirkus, Booklist, LitReactor, Gizmodo, BOLO Books, and the South Florida Sun Sentinel, was nominated for the Anthony Award for Best Hardcover, the Lefty and Barry Awards for Best Novel, the Macavity Award for Best Mystery Novel, and won the LA Times Book Prize in the Mystery/Thriller category.
His upcoming work includes the YA superhero adventure Araña/Spider-Man 2099: Dark Tomorrow, the follow-up to Secret Identity, Alter Ego, and the sci-fi/espionage thriller, Dark Space (with Rob Hart). Alex is also the author of Star Wars Poe Dameron: Free Fall, the Anthony Award-nominated Pete Fernandez Miami Mystery series, and a number of comic books – including The Mysterious Micro-Face (in partnership with NPR), The Black Ghost, The Archies, The Dusk, The Awakened, Mara Llave – Keeper of Time, Blood Oath, stories featuring Marvel heroes the Avengers, Sunspot, White Tiger, Spider-Man and DC’s Superman, Sinestro, and The Question, to name a few.
His short story, “90 Miles” was included in The Best American Mystery and Suspense Stories for 2021 and won the Anthony Award for Best Short Story. Another short story,“Red Zone,” won the 2020 Anthony Award for Best Short Story.
Alex is also the co-creator of the Lethal Lit podcast, named one of the best fiction podcasts of 2018 by The New York Times.
A Miami native, he lives in New York with his wife and children.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 2, 2025
Here is book review/rating from a teen in our community!
Nightmares and Sueños is an excellent book, filled with good characters and insight into Latin American culture. It’s based on the movie Encanto, but takes place before it, so you wouldn’t have to see Encanto to understand it. Teenage Bruno, part of the magical Madrigal family, sees a future where he lives isolated from his family. He’s willing to do whatever it takes to prevent that from happening, even if that means lying about his visions of the future to please others, and taking on a new, more energetic persona. The story gives much more depth to the movie’s side characters, like Bruno’s sisters Julieta and Pepa. I enjoyed it very much. However, it did have some flaws.
I’ll start with the things I liked about it. First of all, teenage Bruno is a very fun, relatable character. He’s sweet and socially awkward, but doesn’t fall into the “adorkable” trope used in many modern Disney movies. He has interesting relationships with many other characters, both inside and outside of his family. The book also has some of the best autistic representation that I’ve seen in literature.
As for its flaws, the book is meant to be a mystery, but most of the plot could be fairly easily figured out from just the first few chapters. The general message of the story, to be yourself, is good but somewhat simple and stereotypical in my opinion, without any real twists to it. The plot is also meant to line up with the movie, but the ending doesn’t quite fit with some aspects of Encanto.
This isn’t necessarily a flaw, but the book is sprinkled with a variety of Spanish words and phrases mixed in the English language. If you aren’t familiar with Spanish, this could get a little confusing. However, this generally happens in dialogue, and the characters usually repeat themselves in English. For example, instead of a character just saying “Hello” or “Hola”, they’d say: “Hola, hello!” This is a bit jarring in my opinion since people usually don’t talk that way in real life. Since I’m learning Spanish, I personally still enjoyed it, as I had fun mentally translating the words and refreshing my memory over the summer. Most of the vocabulary is pretty simple, the kind of words you’d learn in a high school Spanish class.
This book’s plot is good but imperfect, and the characters more than make up for that in my opinion. The story is somewhat dark, and has some violence in it. It’s aimed at a young adult audience, but I would still recommend it for ages eleven and up. I would definitely suggest it for fellow fans of The Twisted Tales Disney series.
Nightmares and Sueños is an excellent book, filled with good characters and insight into Latin American culture. It’s based on the movie Encanto, but takes place before it, so you wouldn’t have to see Encanto to understand it. Teenage Bruno, part of the magical Madrigal family, sees a future where he lives isolated from his family. He’s willing to do whatever it takes to prevent that from happening, even if that means lying about his visions of the future to please others, and taking on a new, more energetic persona. The story gives much more depth to the movie’s side characters, like Bruno’s sisters Julieta and Pepa. I enjoyed it very much. However, it did have some flaws.
I’ll start with the things I liked about it. First of all, teenage Bruno is a very fun, relatable character. He’s sweet and socially awkward, but doesn’t fall into the “adorkable” trope used in many modern Disney movies. He has interesting relationships with many other characters, both inside and outside of his family. The book also has some of the best autistic representation that I’ve seen in literature.
As for its flaws, the book is meant to be a mystery, but most of the plot could be fairly easily figured out from just the first few chapters. The general message of the story, to be yourself, is good but somewhat simple and stereotypical in my opinion, without any real twists to it. The plot is also meant to line up with the movie, but the ending doesn’t quite fit with some aspects of Encanto.
This isn’t necessarily a flaw, but the book is sprinkled with a variety of Spanish words and phrases mixed in the English language. If you aren’t familiar with Spanish, this could get a little confusing. However, this generally happens in dialogue, and the characters usually repeat themselves in English. For example, instead of a character just saying “Hello” or “Hola”, they’d say: “Hola, hello!” This is a bit jarring in my opinion since people usually don’t talk that way in real life. Since I’m learning Spanish, I personally still enjoyed it, as I had fun mentally translating the words and refreshing my memory over the summer. Most of the vocabulary is pretty simple, the kind of words you’d learn in a high school Spanish class.
This book’s plot is good but imperfect, and the characters more than make up for that in my opinion. The story is somewhat dark, and has some violence in it. It’s aimed at a young adult audience, but I would still recommend it for ages eleven and up. I would definitely suggest it for fellow fans of The Twisted Tales Disney series.
March 5, 2025
Omg I loved this. Yes I will admit like some of the other reviews you kinda need to watch Encanto to kinda make sense of some of the characters but it doesn’t take away from the original story. This prequel story focuses on the triplets being 16, when a teenage Bruno is trying to fully understand the gift he has had for now nine years. All teenagers have the whole “I need to change myself” phase and this is a great way of showing that being true to yourself (even if others will not like it) is the most important thing. Give the book a chance to show you that there is a reason we should “Talk About Bruno.”
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews