Yerba Buena

September 1, 2021

Sara Foster flees home at age 16 and eventually ends up as a popular (if slightly mysterious) bartender at the Los Angeles restaurant Yerba Buena. When directionless undergraduate Emilie Dubois takes a job arranging flowers at the restaurant, the connection between her and Sara sizzles. But can love conquer all, including the troublesome past? A first adult novel from Printz Award-winning YA author LaCour; with a 150,000-copy first printing.

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October 25, 2021
In LaCour’s solid adult debut (after the YA novel Watch Over Me), two Los Angles women navigate the uncertainties of their 20s and their complicated pasts. Sara Foster ran away from home at 16 after her girlfriend died under mysterious circumstances that may have involved Sara’s family. Now she’s a bartender whose signature cocktails are in high demand at the popular restaurant Yerba Buena. Emilie Dubois, who is part Creole, spent her early life as the “steady daughter” and “good girl,” but with a sister in and out of rehab, her parents getting divorced, and her grandmother dying, she begins to search for her authentic self rather than continue passing as white and straight. After Emilie takes a job designing flowers at Yerba Buena, she embarks on an affair with the married owner, Jacob Lowell, while Sara occasionally takes home women from the bar. Though the chemistry is palpable between Emilie and Sara, the story turns out to be less about a love affair than what the women each need for themselves. Sometimes the alternating points of view between Sara and Emilie feel interchangeable, but LaCour writes with beauty and clarity about how a relationship is not a substitute for the characters’ mutual need to love themselves. This doesn’t break new ground, but it gets the job done.

December 15, 2021
Their lives upended by drugs, two young women struggle to find love--and their own true selves--as they navigate the complexities of adulthood. Having lost her mother and with her father shirking his parental duties most of the time, teenage Sara Foster feels a deep obligation to care for her younger brother, Spencer. But in the wake of yet another traumatic drug-related tragedy that hits uncomfortably close, Sara runs away to Los Angeles in hopes of rebooting her life. On a parallel track, Emilie Dubois too has witnessed the devastation of drugs up close, as her sister, Colette, struggles to stay clean. Emilie and Sara have their respective burdens to bear--and baggage to unpack--when they meet at Yerba Buena, a high-end LA restaurant. They cannot deny the chemistry they share, but the past has a way of rearing its ugly head when least expected. Both Sara and Emilie meet and diverge again, trying to understand the contours of their lives and if they have room for each other in the vast messiness. Yerba Buena, the mintlike herb with healing properties, is a recurring motif in the novel. "It helps you fall out of love. It tells your future, so you can bear more easily the days in between. Whatever you need it to. It's all about your intentions," a character says of the herb's gifts. One occasionally wishes LaCour subscribed more to the "show rather than tell" philosophy, as the narrative rather clinically focuses on unfolding events. There are weighty themes here about a variety of societal challenges, drugs being just one of them, but they are underexplored and remain too understated. Nevertheless, the rawness of Sara's and Emilie's struggles come through, making for a heartfelt story. A brisk, plot-driven, and entertaining novel.

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Starred review from December 1, 2021
Sara is 14 and in love with the woods and her girlfriend, Annie. When Annie disappears and her body is pulled from the river, Sara can't face living in her small town anymore. To get the money to leave, she partners up with a young drifter, and they sell their bodies to a despicable man. We jump forward in time to Emilie, who works as a flower arranger in Los Angeles. She becomes caught up in a toxic affair with a client, the owner of the restaurant where Sara is now designing cocktails. Once Emilie finds the courage to leave, both women must let go of their pasts to embrace the healing that awaits them when they finally let themselves fall in love. Though its characters are faced with incredible trauma and adversity, Printz Award-winner LaCour's adult debut is lyrical and ultimately hopeful. Yerba buena--the "good herb," which is also the name of the restaurant where Sara and Emilie meet--carries the reader through the pain and symbolizes a better future. Emilie's journey of becoming an interior decorator after leaving her flower-arranging job will also appeal to new adults who may be unsure of their life paths.

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