A review by jayisreading
Yerba Buena by Nina LaCour

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.
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