Reviews with content warning for Drug use - Yerba Buena

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

alaina's review against another edition

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dark emotional slow-paced

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

3.5

This book has many scenes with deep rich emotional experiences, but I struggled to care for or root for the main characters.
This is a story about falling in love but isn’t a romance.
I wanted the Creole family identity to be explored more deeply.

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caitlynva's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring 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

5.0

A wonderful book where two women’s separate stories come together as one over a shared location. Each comes with their own struggles and complex issues that leads you to never take a “side” throughout the book. Beautifully written.

Content Warnings

khaleesimod93's review against another edition

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challenging emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

3.5

Reading the blurb and looking at the cover, I expected a romance. It ended up being so much more and not all in a good way. The story had no purpose. It meandered and wandered. It's kind of like when you are daydreaming. It wasn't bad, just not at all expected. There were a lot of dark themes throughout the book that weren't at all mentioned anywhere. And I really wish they would have. It's a mix of so many different genres, but it works for the story. I liked both characters separately. Them together didn't mesh well for me at least. I wish, instead of writing about both characters, the author would have chosen just one. Sara was a real inspiration. Her hurt. Her past. And all her trauma. She eventually learned to heal from it. I'm not sure what the point of Emilie's story is, but I did love her figuring out what she wanted out of her life. I felt there were things unfinished when I got to the end.

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