Yerba Buena - Nina LaCour

Author: Nina LaCour

Genre: Literary Fiction, Coming of Age.
Rating: 3.75 stars.

In a Nutshell: A slow-burn, coming-of-age, queer literary fiction. The characters are well-developed. But the romance is not the star of the show, unlike what the official genre says. I don’t think this book will click with everyone.

Story Synopsis:
After young Sara’s love life comes to a sudden end, she runs away from her home in Northern California to LA, hoping for a fresh start. With a lot of hard work and some personal compromises, she finally makes a name for herself in a successful restaurant.
Emilie, a Creole whose family originally came from New Orleans, is confused about what she wants to do in life. She takes a job arranging flowers for a restaurant, until the owner notices her and woos her.
When Sara and Emilie meet each other, the connection is immediate but their circumstances are such that they can’t speak openly to one another. How will Sara and Emilie bridge over the hurts of their past? Will they be able to put aside their insecurities in the hope of a joint future? Read and find out.
The story comes to us in the third person perspectives of Sara and Emilie.


Where the book worked for me:
✔ Great representation – one MC is a Black bisexual, the other is a lesbian. Some more LGBTQ characters in the story.

✔ “Yerba Buena”, Spanish for "good herb", is used so many times and so well in the story. Right from a hotel name to the actual use of the herb to the symbolic role played by the herb in the characters’ lives, the title pops up again and again.

✔ There are too many characters at the start but the way they are written made their identities pretty clear. I didn’t have any confusion about who was who.

✔ The ending is beautiful.


Where the book still worked for me but might not work for other readers:
⚠ The pacing is extremely slow. I was prepared for this as it is a literary fiction, but those who like quick reads and loads of action won’t enjoy the writing.

⚠ The book is marked as a romance on Goodreads as well as NetGalley, but it is not at all a fit for this genre. A better description would have been a coming-of-age drama, but this would have collided with the promo declaring this book to be Nina LaCour’s first adult fiction novel. I am not too fond of OTT romance, so the lack of romance didn’t bother me at all. But if you are looking at this mainly for the romance, you won’t get it until much later in the story, and then too, in small instalments.

⚠ The book is clearly literary fiction, and the story is strongly character-oriented. Those who prefer plot-oriented stories won’t enjoy this kind of writing.

⚠ This is not an easy read and some of the scenes are quite traumatic. Sensitive readers or those in a low mental space might do better to stay away from this dark story.


Where the book could have worked better for me:
❌ Sara’s and Emilie’s story lines comes to us in alternate chapters. Though their timeline in the first half of the novel isn’t the same, there is no indication of the year as a point of reference. This makes the story confusing until their tracks merge. Even afterwards, there is a back and forth in the timeframe. I would have appreciated better time references, like maybe a month/year mention at the start of the chapter.

❌ I didn’t feel close to any of the characters, which is quite surprising for a literary fiction. It felt like they were always on the other side of a glass screen and I was just watching them without worrying about them.


All in all, the writing and the characters hooked me, though the lack of connect and the slow pace deterred me from rating this higher. Still, it is a poignant story and those who like their fiction on the darker side of the emotional array will like this coming-of-age novel for adults. Just remember not to look at it as a romance. I would certainly like to read more books by this author.

My thanks to Hodder & Stoughton, Coronet, and NetGalley for the DRC of “Yerba Buena”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.