Yerba Buena

This was very different from what I expected from the description. It was much more melancholy, and much more beautiful. While definitely romantic, the book was not a romance but a two-character bildungsroman, focusing less on the romance between Emilie and Sara and more on their characters, experiences, and growth as individuals, and how their experiences cause them to relate to each other and the world. It was lovely.

Sara Foster and Emily Dubois are two people that go through hell and back just for their broken pieces to come back fitting into each other's just right. We follow Sara and Emily from childhood in their separate journeys to adulthood. We watch the circumstances that fall into place, forcing Sara to run away at just sixteen and Emily to seclude herself while reaching out to others, causing the chain of events that land them right in front of each other.

I say watch because that is precisely what it feels like. We are watching these two girls grow up and go through horrible traumas caused by other traumas, and we're right there with them. When Sara makes a decision she thinks is for the best but hurts everyone, including herself, we sit show more with ourselves and think, why would our little Sara do that? The little Sara we watched marvel in the woods at the colors? The dual perspective gives us this experience; to feel the characters' emotions while also being on the side while we grow to care about them. I found myself thinking about how these girls must feel throughout the day as if they were real people still experiencing life when I closed the book. Of course, the nature of this book created anxiety, but it also developed a fondness I don't get to feel daily. It felt nice to care so deeply about someone the way I did with these characters.

This could have been the perfect book. The only reason it wasn't was because of the romance. It could have been fine, but how it was done felt so different from the rest of the story. We are following Sara and Emily as they go through everything; we were not told through conversations in a couple pages what their life has looked like. But the romance happened so fast, in comparison. The second they looked at each other, they were infatuated and in love. It didn't make sense with the people they were and their other decisions. This could have been not as bad, but the ending revolved around this flimsy romance. After caring about them for the entire book, not having a chance to fall in love with their love, the ending should've resonated with what was given to readers.

I'm going to use this to start my other point on why I loved this book. As a reader, you feel so much disappointment reading this. I'm aware those two sentences make no sense so allow me to explain. The story of trauma after trauma and then having to live an everyday life afterward was amazingly realistic. The defeat the characters feel is what you feel. If the characters are betrayed, you go through the day with a pit in your stomach. The baffled emotion after seeing how Sara decides to get out of the circumstances is precisely how she feels about making that choice. It's another reason this book feels so intimate to read. You are getting a real story where the twists and turns are not for you to feel better but for what would actually happen.

This is really important to understand going into this book. I saw a lot of reviews saying they didn't like this book because of Sara's or Emily's decisions, but those decisions made sense with what they went through. So, caution going into this: this book is not to make you feel good; it is to make you feel.

I went into this book with zero expectations. I only read it because I said I would and bought it. I was pleasantly surprised with the results when I finished, but not precisely pleasant, considering I did not want it to end and found myself upset that it did. I wouldn't recommend this to everyone because of the subject matter. But if you read the trigger warnings and are okay after, read this book. It was beautiful yet ugly: both in the most exposed way. show less

This one has been sitting on my TBR shelf since it came out, and I'm so glad I finally got around to reading it because it was actually good. But be warned, they're right when they say, "don't judge a book by its cover," because this one gets a little dark.

Sara and Emilie cross paths many times throughout their lives, but it never seems to be the right time. Picture Normal People by Sally Rooney, except it's about a different set of normal people. Everything about this story is so vulnerable that I felt comfortable around the two women, like a friend they were sharing their story with rather than a reader.

Ultimately, we learn together that no fresh start is ever really fresh. We will always be the people we are, crafted by the events show more we experience and never able to fully escape our past, much as we might try. What we can do, though, is find new aspects of ourselves in other people. To quote the story, 'I lost nearly everything, and then I built something better.'

One of my literary weaknesses is when an author can create characters I care about. LaCour goes beyond this and creates a relationship between her two characters that I genuinely want to be a successful one, while placing realistic enough personal roadblocks in their way. LaCour first develops the two as individuals before placing any emphasis on their relationship, and I think that's why it works so well. show less

A book about finding your path and your person, even if those things are never settled and take a long time to feel right, reading it felt like being promised a place in the future where I was happy. In this book love can be flawed and cyclical and overwhelmed by the rest of life, but still sacred. It isn’t foolish to choose love, but nothing is promised.

Essentially queer. Characters themselves provide multiple perspectives on their own identities, but the structure and form are themselves queer and resilient.

The first chapter felt so easy and light, then it got so dark and sad so fast that it was almost nauseating. The change was hard to navigate, but the book itself resisted the tone (much in the way that humans find resilience show more after trauma). It carries you to beautiful places, then drops you harshly, but always with the promise that the world itself brings you good things and good people—that the fullness of experience is out there and will wait for you, but will rush in the moment you let it.

I want to read it again and again, just to return to a world where time passes like a force of its own (and I can skim through it fast enough to see how it moves among these characters I love so much.) show less

This book is breathtakingly beautiful. I love how Nina has done such a good job in describing the world she was building, which made the story of Sara and emilie so much more powerful. It felt as if I were sitting at the next table over at Yerba buena as they fell in and out of love together.

This one took me almost a month to get through. Which is not a typical listen for me. At first, it was a little hard for me to get into, and then, I started to want to savor it a little.

It was a strange listening experience to read about protagonists named Emile and Sara—bc MY name is Emily, and my sisters name is Sarah. Spelled different, but listening makes that mean nothing. It didn’t help that I connected pretty hard with the aimlessness of Emilie’s character. That hit me… a little close to home in this particular time in my life. Which also added to some of my hesitancy to read other things in between short listens to this one.

It’s a Nina LaCour book, so it’s wonderfully written, visceral, and a little sad. I’m show more really glad to see her branching out to adult books with this one, as I’ve loved all the YA ones of hers I’ve read. Do not go in expecting a romance novel—this is not that. There is a romantic arc, but this is really more about two women figuring out their lives separately for the majority of this book. It’s great, but I think some of her other books have drawn me in a bit more and more quickly. That said, again, she hit me right in the gut with Emilie, so, there’s that. I’ll pick up anything by this author, at this point, she’s earned my full trust. show less

In a Nutshell: A slow-burn, coming-of-age, queer literary fiction. The characters are well-developed. But the romance is not the star of the show, unlike what the official genre says. I don’t think this book will click with everyone.

Story Synopsis:

After young Sara’s love life comes to a sudden end, she runs away from her home in Northern California to LA, hoping for a fresh start. With a lot of hard work and some personal compromises, she finally makes a name for herself in a successful restaurant.
Emilie, a Creole whose family originally came from New Orleans, is confused about what she wants to do in life. She takes a job arranging flowers for a restaurant, until the owner notices her and woos her.
When Sara and Emilie meet each

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other, the connection is immediate but their circumstances are such that they can’t speak openly to one another. How will Sara and Emilie bridge over the hurts of their past? Will they be able to put aside their insecurities in the hope of a joint future? Read and find out.
The story comes to us in the third person perspectives of Sara and Emilie.

Where the book worked for me:
✔ Great representation – one MC is a Black bisexual, the other is a lesbian. Some more LGBTQ characters in the story.

✔ “Yerba Buena”, Spanish for "good herb", is used so many times and so well in the story. Right from a hotel name to the actual use of the herb to the symbolic role played by the herb in the characters’ lives, the title pops up again and again.

✔ There are too many characters at the start but the way they are written made their identities pretty clear. I didn’t have any confusion about who was who.

✔ The ending is beautiful.

Where the book still worked for me but might not work for other readers:
⚠ The pacing is extremely slow. I was prepared for this as it is a literary fiction, but those who like quick reads and loads of action won’t enjoy the writing.

⚠ The book is marked as a romance on Goodreads as well as NetGalley, but it is not at all a fit for this genre. A better description would have been a coming-of-age drama, but this would have collided with the promo declaring this book to be Nina LaCour’s first adult fiction novel. I am not too fond of OTT romance, so the lack of romance didn’t bother me at all. But if you are looking at this mainly for the romance, you won’t get it until much later in the story, and then too, in small instalments.

⚠ The book is clearly literary fiction, and the story is strongly character-oriented. Those who prefer plot-oriented stories won’t enjoy this kind of writing.

⚠ This is not an easy read and some of the scenes are quite traumatic. Sensitive readers or those in a low mental space might do better to stay away from this dark story.

Where the book could have worked better for me:
❌ Sara’s and Emilie’s story lines comes to us in alternate chapters. Though their timeline in the first half of the novel isn’t the same, there is no indication of the year as a point of reference. This makes the story confusing until their tracks merge. Even afterwards, there is a back and forth in the timeframe. I would have appreciated better time references, like maybe a month/year mention at the start of the chapter.

❌ I didn’t feel close to any of the characters, which is quite surprising for a literary fiction. It felt like they were always on the other side of a glass screen and I was just watching them without worrying about them.

All in all, the writing and the characters hooked me, though the lack of connect and the slow pace deterred me from rating this higher. Still, it is a poignant story and those who like their fiction on the darker side of the emotional array will like this coming-of-age novel for adults. Just remember not to look at it as a romance. I would certainly like to read more books by this author.

3.75 stars.

My thanks to Hodder & Stoughton, Coronet, and NetGalley for the DRC of “Yerba Buena”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

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