A review by kell_xavi
Yerba Buena by Nina LaCour

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. 
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