Reviews tagging 'Pedophilia'

Yerba Buena: A Novel by Nina LaCour

66 reviews

jayisreading's review against another edition

emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

3.0

I enjoyed LaCour’s YA novel, We Are Okay, when I read it years ago, and I thought she did a wonderful job with her quiet exploration through grief. I haven’t read her other novels since, but when I found out that she was publishing a novel for an adult audience, I admit I was skeptical but interested to see what she would bring to the table.

Yerba Buena ended up being another dive into grief, about two teenage girls (who grow up over time in the book), and a tender queer love that blooms between those two characters. While my memory of We Are Okay is a bit fuzzy, having read it so long ago, I did feel as though I was reading a repackaged and messier version of it. LaCour was ambitious in her attempt to merge two different storylines into one. Unfortunately, I didn’t think she succeeded here, because the two stories were too different (even if the overarching themes were similar). It also didn’t help that the way she had the two characters’ stories merge was through a “love at first sight” moment. I found that with the attempt to have two distinct storylines, LaCour lost sight of fleshing out her characters into something more. I think this book would have been more successful if attention was placed on either Emilie’s or Sara’s storyline (probably the latter’s, if I’m honest), or even having two novellas that connected to each other.

I do want to praise LaCour for her beautiful writing, though, which was apparent even in We Are Okay. Relatedly, I thought her descriptions of Southern California (specifically the Los Angeles area) well-crafted. Despite the grief that exists in this book, you were still able to feel the warmth of the Californian sun.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Grief, and Alcohol

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Pedophilia, and Sexual assault

lolajh's review against another edition

emotional mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

WOW. What a truly beautiful read. Nina is such a talented writer and I’d love to see more adult fiction like this from her because this was beautiful. The emotional journey of Sara recovering from her trauma and Emilie finding stability and their relationship making the both of them better people was just beautiful. Hard to get through some parts (I feel like the s.a. did not have to be that graphic to get its point across), but a lovely ending that made it all worth it. Loved the characters, loved the story, just a truly lovely book.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Rape, and Sexual assault

Moderate: Addiction, Child death, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Pedophilia, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Grief, Death of parent, and Murder

fatimaarif's review against another edition

4.25

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Drug abuse, and Drug use

Moderate: Pedophilia and Racism

Minor: Homophobia

hi_its_micah's review against another edition

emotional sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Drug use, and Pedophilia

Moderate: Child death, Death, and Death of parent

Minor: Infidelity, Outing, and Abandonment

eleigh17's review against another edition

See content warnings 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Pedophilia, and Sexual assault

Moderate: Pedophilia and Sexual assault

priadrummond's review against another edition

emotional reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Drug abuse, Drug use, and Abandonment

Minor: Pedophilia, Violence, and Trafficking

lovealwaysadi's review against another edition

emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Infidelity, Pedophilia, Grief, Death of parent, and Alcohol

Moderate: Cursing, Emotional abuse, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Medical content, Murder, and Abandonment

Minor: Terminal illness and Toxic relationship

kell_xavi's review against another edition

emotional sad medium-paced

3.0

Nina LaCour is skilled at writing teenage girls and grief. The synopsis of Yerba Buena felt a lot different from her young adult work, but the writing style, that slow fluidity of language, the skill and noticing, expanding of the characters, is consistent with LaCour’s previous work. This novel starts in a familiar place, with two teenage girls experiencing strong emotions and traumatic events, and it grows in a new way: how does grief, love, anger, trauma show up over years, across spaces and jobs and interests and people. 

The strength of this book for me isn’t that it move away from the audience LaCour has previously written for, but that it takes that seed of youth and stretches it a little further. This book allows curiosity and restlessness to lead to contentment, allows past events to be difficult while fading into the background, allows more responsibility and decision-making for the characters and those they know. 

I didn’t personally relate to this novel as much as I did to We Are Okay. I was an often saddened and felt heavy with the events and characterization. I wasn’t strongly attached to Sara or Emilie, and their friends and family—Colette, Pablo, Alice, Jacob, Spencer, Annie (side note: I hope this is a reference to Nancy Garden?)—were disappointingly blank façades, sketches. There wasn’t much to breathe into beyond cocktails and decor. There was a continued sense, not so much of uncertainty, as a belief in failure. I hope others find something special in this book, and I think the potential is there, but I’m not the right person. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death

Moderate: Addiction, Drug use, Infidelity, Pedophilia, and Terminal illness

Minor: Medical content

overdose

mlovesbooks's review against another edition

Not sure this is my thing.

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Pedophilia and Rape

hoey_girlboss_queen's review against another edition

lighthearted slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

Para mí, el libro resultó ser una decepción. 

Primero que nada, los personajes y la historia en sí me parecieron planos y poco desarrollados. Me dio la impresión de que se pudo haber hecho más. Los sucesos pasaban uno tras otro sin tanta correlación ni cohesión, por lo que más de una vez me confundí con la trama.

En relación a la parte romántica del libro, tampoco creo que se hizo algo espectacular. Nunca pude sentir una conexión especial entre las dos protagonistas y la manera en que sus historias se entrelazaban no me dejó satisfecha.

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Addiction, Cursing, Pedophilia, Sexual content, and Death of parent