Yerba Buena

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / LaCour, Nina	4-week checkout	Due 05-20-2024
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / LaCour, Nina	4-week checkout	Due 05-10-2024
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / LaCour, Nina	4-week checkout	Due 04-29-2024

"The debut adult novel by the bestselling and award-winning YA author Nina LaCour, following two women on a star-crossed journey toward each other. When Sara Foster runs away from home at sixteen, she leaves behind not only the losses that have shattered her world but the girl she once was, capable of trust and intimacy. Years later, in Los Angeles, she is a sought-after bartender, renowned as much for her brilliant cocktails as for the mystery that clings to her. Across the city, Emilie Dubois is in a holding pattern. In her seventh year and fifth major as an undergraduate, she yearns for the beauty and community her Creole grandparents cultivated but is unable to commit. On a whim, she takes a job arranging flowers at the glamorous restaurant Yerba Buena and embarks on an affair with the married owner. When Sara catches sight of Emilie one morning at Yerba Buena, their connection is immediate. But the damage both women carry, and the choices they have made, pulls them apart again and again. When Sara's old life catches up to her, upending everything she thought she wanted just as Emilie has finally gained her own sense of purpose, they must decide if their love is more powerful than their pasts. At once exquisite and expansive, astonishing in its humanity and heart, Yerba Buena is a love story for our time and a propulsive journey through the lives of two women finding their way in the world"-- Provided by publisher.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Ok novel submitted by redwood on July 11, 2023, 12:33pm While billed as a romance, the actual interactions between the main characters, Emilie and Sara, are few. LaCour mainly focuses on their backstories and separate ambitions, and how these draw them towards and away each other.

The book begins with Sara as a teenager in Guerneville, exploring her first relationship among redwoods. When her girlfriend is found dead in the river, she decides she has to leave town and runs away to LA with one friend and little money. Some very disturbing things happen in this section, and at first I was unsatisfied with how they were handled, but LaCour does return to them and give them their due at the end. In keeping with my personal theme that visits to Southern California just make me miss Northern California, I found the Russian River sections of the book to be most captivating. Honestly, Sara’s insistence on becoming a NorCal-to-SoCal transplant mainly makes sense because her life in NorCal was toxic (also, it’s a bit weird that a SoCal book is titled after the former name of San Francisco).

I struggled with this book a little because I was more interested in Sara’s character, but Emilie’s chapters were usually longer. Emilie grows up in greater LA, leading a life of privilege but not without challenges, particularly when it comes to her sister’s drug addiction (which intersects with issues in Sara’s family). As an adult, Emilie is lost, on her fifth major in her seventh year of undergrad. On a whim, she gets a job arranging flowers at Yerba Buena, the upscale restaurant where Sara creates famous drinks. The novel continues from there, following the two women lightly orbit each other as they come to terms with their family histories and senses of artistic purpose. I wouldn’t say this was my favorite book, but it was a fun way to end my very fun LA trip, and I’m glad I stuck through to the end.