Scan barcode
marinaemoore's review
2.0
If there were 1/2 stars, I’d give this book 2.5/5.
The thing about Yerba Buena is that none of the thoughts or themes or characters felt complete. There were a lot of great ideas that weren’t ever fully explored, and therefore, this book felt disjointed.
Two other things to note…
- The chapters are really long… like 50 pages+ long.
- I thought there were a lot of side characters in this book and it was kind of tough to keep track of who was who. Also, their side-stories didn’t add anything.
The thing about Yerba Buena is that none of the thoughts or themes or characters felt complete. There were a lot of great ideas that weren’t ever fully explored, and therefore, this book felt disjointed.
Two other things to note…
- The chapters are really long… like 50 pages+ long.
- I thought there were a lot of side characters in this book and it was kind of tough to keep track of who was who. Also, their side-stories didn’t add anything.
baileyjohnk's review against another edition
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
snaillydia's review
2.0
When I read We Are Okay in 2019, I was blown away. Not only because it's a great work, but because it was the right book, at the right time. I was 18, lost, forced to confront things, forced to cut loose. I guess now, almost 4 years later, I was expecting something similar from Yerba Buena. I thought Nina's writing had grown with me, and that as her first adult novel, it would ground me into my 20s, just like We Are Okay grounded me into young adulthood.
Evidently, this book could not live up to that. Maybe my unrealistic expectations had something to do with it. But I think I'm actually being generous. Had this not been a LaCour novel, had I not been patient and willing to overlook flaws, I am not sure I would have finished it at all.
Why? Because I was bored.
Let me clarify. I understand that this is a character study spanning over more than a decade, that it was never going to be plot heavy. I love slow character studies... when the characters are interesting.
Throughout this book, we follow two women very closely. Your enjoyment of the story hinges on these women being likable or, at least, interesting. Sara, a bartender and teen runaway, captured my attention. She got a clear arc. Her story felt like if one of LaCour's young adult novels just kind of kept going for another 15 years. Then you have Emilie's story, a messier tangle of locations, jobs, relationships, that is so unfocused it feels like an afterthought added to make a long-spanning love story work.
Even though I came close to liking one of the perspectives, the experience was still lackluster. I really wish we had focused on that story. Instead, we hop away from it, important emotional beats of Sara's story happening off the page, as we follow someone else, rushing through two lives rather than sinking into one. There were moments that, had we lingered, could have had major emotional impact. This book suffers in their absence.
Another aspect that was lacking was the writing style. Previously, LaCour wrote sharply, balancing the urgency of needing to express feeling with quiet introspectiveness. It was very simplistic, yet powerful and real when it was ready to shatter your heart. Yerba Buena abandons that punchiness for what I imagine was intended to be a more adult approach. More detail, more description. This sadly doesn't end up adding much, it bogs down the pace, and it's still too simple to be impressive stylistically.
This all culminated in a book that, no matter how much I wanted to like, bored me. I slogged through thinking of more interesting stuff on my shelves. I'll still keep reading LaCour, I just probably won't buy her next novel as a brand-new thirty dollar hardback.
Evidently, this book could not live up to that. Maybe my unrealistic expectations had something to do with it. But I think I'm actually being generous. Had this not been a LaCour novel, had I not been patient and willing to overlook flaws, I am not sure I would have finished it at all.
Why? Because I was bored.
Let me clarify. I understand that this is a character study spanning over more than a decade, that it was never going to be plot heavy. I love slow character studies... when the characters are interesting.
Throughout this book, we follow two women very closely. Your enjoyment of the story hinges on these women being likable or, at least, interesting. Sara, a bartender and teen runaway, captured my attention. She got a clear arc. Her story felt like if one of LaCour's young adult novels just kind of kept going for another 15 years. Then you have Emilie's story, a messier tangle of locations, jobs, relationships, that is so unfocused it feels like an afterthought added to make a long-spanning love story work.
Even though I came close to liking one of the perspectives, the experience was still lackluster. I really wish we had focused on that story. Instead, we hop away from it, important emotional beats of Sara's story happening off the page, as we follow someone else, rushing through two lives rather than sinking into one. There were moments that, had we lingered, could have had major emotional impact. This book suffers in their absence.
Another aspect that was lacking was the writing style. Previously, LaCour wrote sharply, balancing the urgency of needing to express feeling with quiet introspectiveness. It was very simplistic, yet powerful and real when it was ready to shatter your heart. Yerba Buena abandons that punchiness for what I imagine was intended to be a more adult approach. More detail, more description. This sadly doesn't end up adding much, it bogs down the pace, and it's still too simple to be impressive stylistically.
This all culminated in a book that, no matter how much I wanted to like, bored me. I slogged through thinking of more interesting stuff on my shelves. I'll still keep reading LaCour, I just probably won't buy her next novel as a brand-new thirty dollar hardback.
valeriasshelf's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
sad
tense
slow-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: Death of parent, Sexual assault, Death, and Drug abuse
mquater's review
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
slow-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
3.5
ramunepocky's review
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
“But that’s the way it goes. I lost nearly everything, and then I built something better.”
This book was somewhat a disappointment to me. We Are Okay is one of my absolute favourite books so I had high hopes that I’d love this one too, and I just didn’t. It was okay, but only okay. It wasn’t a particularly long book, and in spite of the fact that it spans over about 12 years, I feel like absolutely nothing happened. And despite the fact that there is essentially two protagonists, Sara and Emilie, I feel like the book isn’t split well between the two; it focuses so much on Emilie and so little on Sara, which is a shame, because I absolutely couldn’t stand Emilie, whereas I really felt for Sara and would have liked to read more about her. Emilie was just so damn annoying and I really hated her. I feel like she made a victim out of herself, even though she was the one that got herself into those situations. She distanced herself entirely from her family due to her sister’s issues with drugs, which I can understand wanting distance from that, but then she complained that there was a distance between her and her family, and between her and her sister. BRO, you created it. And then the fact that she actively got involved with a married man, who had kids. She knew that he was married, she knew that he had kids, and she had an affair with him anyway, a long standing one, and only broke up with him when it actively affected her. I was genuinely so disgusted with her for that, and I could no longer feel any sympathy or warmth towards her. I feel so much of the book focused on the affair too, and I just really didn’t want that. It was so vile. And it irritated me so much that Emilie once again acts like a victim and goes on about how no-one wants to stay, and everyone leaves her, like ofc he’s gonna leave in the middle of the night, hE’S MARRIED AND YOU KNOW THAT HES GOING HOME TO HIS WIFE AND KIDS GODDAMMIT. And again, it annoyed me so much that after Sara’s father died and she practically begged Emilie to come home with her, and Emilie said no, she then went on again about how everyone leaves her and that Sara wouldn’t come back like BRO, WHAT. She literally begged you to come with her. You do this to yourself, and then act like a victim and blame it on everyone else. It just winds me up so much.
The redeeming features for me were the chapters about Sara – I was a lot more invested in her life and the harrowing things she’d been through, and the connections she’d made and lost. She’d done whatever she could to survive, even though it meant severing all her ties to her hometown and her friends. I was glad that she got the opportunity to reunite with them ten years later and that they didn’t hold it against her. Her tumultuous relationship with her brother was interesting too since he was the one part of her family she’d tried to hold onto, but he didn’t want her to hold on as tight as she did, especially after they were older, and he understood more what was happening and wanted his own freedom to choose for himself. I often found myself desperately trying not to sob during Sara’s chapters because everything she went through and built for herself just really broke me. I really wish she had been the centre of the book instead of Emilie as maybe I would have loved it more.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Infidelity
Moderate: Sexual content, Sexual assault, Death, Sexual harassment, and Drug abuse