Yerba Buena by Nina LaCour Book Review
“‘Here, Vivian said, picking a steam from a tangle of small green leaves. ‘It’s the good herb. Yerba Buena. It’s healing. Take this and put it in a cup of hot water. Sue in the mini-mart will give you the cup and water for free.’
‘What does it heal?’
. . . ‘Whatever you need it to. It’s all about your intentions.'”
(pg. 43)
About
Author: Nina LaCour
Genre: New Adult
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Synopsis
When Sara Foster runs away from home at sixteen, she leaves behind not only the losses that have shattered her world but the girl she once was, capable of trust and intimacy. Years later, in Los Angeles, she is a sought-after bartender, renowned as much for her brilliant cocktails as for the mystery that clings to her. Across the city, Emilie Dubois is in a holding pattern. In her seventh year and fifth major as an undergraduate, she yearns for the beauty and community her Creole grandparents cultivated but is unable to commit. On a whim, she takes a job arranging flowers at the glamorous restaurant Yerba Buena and embarks on an affair with the married owner.
When Sara catches sight of Emilie one morning at Yerba Buena, their connection is immediate. But the damage both women carry, and the choices they have made, pulls them apart again and again. When Sara’s old life catches up to her, upending everything she thought she wanted just as Emilie has finally gained her own sense of purpose, they must decide if their love is more powerful than their pasts.
At once exquisite and expansive, astonishing in its humanity and heart, Yerba Buena is a love story for our time and a propulsive journey through the lives of two women finding their way in the world.
Review
Spoilers Contained Below
❗️❗️ Reader sensitivity warning for addiction, passing away, and sexual abuse.❗️❗️
To those finding healing,
To be quite honest, I had no idea what Yerba Buena was or what it meant until I read this book. Now I know a new herb.
Yerba Buena by Nina LaCour encapsulated the essence of a somber, yet healing story that takes you on a journey of two woman who are both carrying hurt who find peace in themselves and the relationships around them.
Nina LaCour also captures such a fresh, yet melancholy mood throughout the story that it makes you feel like you’re taking a stroll in the woods while listening to the birds chirp a sorrowful melody. She just has a way of words that makes you feel something or feel the moment or emotion so profoundly that it becomes your emotion. I can’t think of anything more powerful than that.
The beginning was downhearted and packed a heavy punch. We met Sara who loved a girl named Annie. They were fourteen-years-old and would sometimes sneak into the redwoods near where they lived to kiss in secret. Then one day, Annie went missing and no one could find her, despite the hope that Sara had that they would. They did find Annie. They found her in the river near the house where Sara grew up.
I can’t even fathom how that must have felt for Sara—-to see the boat drag the body of the girl she loved up out of the river at such a young age. What made me equally disturbed and angry was how casual the dad was about thinking that no one would find Annie. I mean, that drawing that he crafted on that paper from the drawing game Sara and Spencer used to do was absolutely gosh-forsaken awful. I mean, who draws something like that to a fourteen-year-old kid??!?!?! We were not in Hawkins. This wasn’t Stranger Things, so I had no idea what kind of man draws the body of a little girl coming out of a river like it didn’t mean anything.
I honestly don’t blame Sara for wanting to leave town after what happened to Annie and seeing that picture her dad drew. Heck, that’s a big red flag if her dad is unbothered by the twisted image he drew, and I would have said a “see you never,” and left too. Also, it said a lot that the dad never went after his fourteen-year-old daughter after she left. Like did he even care that a girl just got dragged out of the river and his own daughter just skipped town???? Where was his concern as a father? Loser 🙃.
But tell me I’m wrong?
To make matters worst was the way Sara felt was the only way to get money in order to leave for LA. What I liked most about Sara was how she was a hard-working with a good head on her shoulders. I know that the story talked about how her mom passed away when she was younger because she was addicted, and how Sara lived with the trauma and pain of seeing her mother in the hospital bed and seeing her pass away. That, again, is something absolutely painful and heavy that no one that young should ever have to experience. However, sadly, seeing or having a loved one pass away is something we all experience no matter the age. But it will never not be easy or something that we will always carry with us. However, because Sara was so young, I understood how alone she felt with her dad not really caring or being there for her and her and her brother having to fend for themselves. I don’t know the time period that this book was written that allowed Sara to clean hotels for work like she did. I’m not too sure because isn’t there child labor laws about how young you have to be to work and how many hours? It didn’t sit right with me that she was out here cleaning hotels so young, making a living like she was years ahead of her. I think about the quote though about how people “compliment” someone as mature for their age and how it’s not really a compliment that people have to grow up so fast to be mature. I agree because I was always told I was mature for my age, it was because I had been through things that no one else my age was going through but I had to. The pain, battle, and hardship is what made me see things that made me mature—-mature to understand things that adults didn’t even have to understand or understood yet. It’s weird to be called mature.
But back to what I was saying about Sara. She left with this dude she met outside of the hotels she cleaned—Grant. They got money from one of Sara’s dad’s friends, Eugene who was a sleazy, slimy, gross, vile excuse of a human being who took advantage of both Sara and Grant because he knew how desperate they were for money to make it out of that town. First of all, the fact that Eugene was the dad’s friend should have been a red flag enough that Sara and Grant should have RAN the other way. I don’t judge Sara and Grant’s decisions because they were in a tough situation and they had no money to make it out of the town and here was someone who could give them a means of escape. I was just absolutely REPULSED by what Eugene insinuated to Sara and Grant to make them feel like they had no choice. He is an older man and he should have just helped Sara and Grant without wanting anything—least of all what he asked for—-in return. But it’s men, sorry, garbage, like Eugene that makes me so furious that there are people like that who exist. It’s disgusting and I felt absolutely pained and awful for Sara and Grant who never deserved to be put in that situation in the first place. When Grant cried . . . it broke my heart.
Eugene can rot in a trash where he belongs and we can dump him in the ocean for his poor existence as a human being 🙃.
Sara and Grant did make it to LA, but barely. I loved how they had such a trusting relationship even if they just met—-they were both wanderers with a difficult backstory. Grant had just been kicked out by his parents when he came out to them and he had nowhere to go and Sara had discovered traumatizing and gut-wrenching news about someone she loved. Sometimes, you just need a great escape with someone who can make your pain feel less lonely.
I was really happy that everything kind of worked out for Sara and Grant when they got to LA. It was so cool that the person who worked where Sara worked was going to move in with her boyfriend and conveniently offered Sara her apartment, which I mean, good for Sara. It made me kind of sad to see Sara and Grant part ways after they made it to LA together because it would have been cool to see them go on their journey together. But it was okay because they both had different journey’s they were on. I liked how we got to see Sara grow up from this frightened, pained fourteen-year old to someone who was so much more independent and finding her place by herself. I give her so much credit because it’s extremely difficult to find yourself or your place in the world, especially alone. But I think we all I have to find who we are in this world by ourselves at one point because that’s when ewe can really focus on what brings us joy and passion.
I also enjoyed seeing Sara reconcile with her past later on in the book because the past didn’t hurt or scare her anymore. When so much time has passed, I do feel like things become easier and less painful for us to process and face what happened. I think it’s because when we distance ourselves from pain or who we were or what happened, we have more clarity to see that person or thing for what it was and to find solace or healing or peace with that person or event. I liked that we got to see Sara return to her town even if it brought back all those invading memories. I was proud that she did go back because she didn’t let her past or her fears define her or keep her from doing something that she needed to do. Her father recently passed away, so Sara went back to fulfill her dad’s last wishes. To be quite honest, it was really odd that the dad just passed away or was hurt without telling either of his kids. I don’t think the dad thought Spencer or Sara cared about him enough and what happened to him and maybe that’s why he didn’t tell them he was in the hospital when he was. But I mean, if he really wanted his kids to care about him, he should have cared for them—-he could have tried harder to find Sara or be a father to Spencer. That doesn’t mean the father deserved to pass away without loved ones at his side, it was just complicated thinking about how we didn’t really get to know the dad as a person, but through his actions. And based on his actions, it didn’t seem like he cared for his kids that much, but his kids wanted to care for him.
When Sara returned home, I also really liked how her friends remembered her and welcomed her into their circle again. It must have felt like stepping into the past when she saw everyone again, but older. It’s such a weird feeling—-like going to a reunion and seeing how everyone has changed but not really. I went to an elementary school growing up, and now I work there with some of my past teachers and it’s the most surreal feeling everyday to walk on campus and remember how I used to be a student there—younger—and now I’m a teacher there and to feel how much the school itself hasn’t changed, but I have. But I liked how nothing changed between Sara and her friends who filled her in about their lives and who had kids and who didn’t. It felt natural and I feel like true friends will make you feel like no time has passed.
While Sara was also back at home, she discovered some new harsh truths about what may have happened to Annie. I did want more explanation about Annie—who she was, what happened to her, her upbringing. Because it seemed that Sara’s dad knew that Annie wouldn’t be found that day—-hence the morbid drawing—because he and his friends sold her d***s or something. Things went south and then they dumped her in the river, supposedly. If that’s the case, honestly, the dad and his friends should have done better than to sell to a minor and should all have been put behind bars for not only selling to a minor, but for their repulsive actions towards Annie. I couldn’t even imagine how Sara must have felt to know her father passed away and to discover these new revelations about the man he really was. I mean, she knew what kind of man he was, but a part of us always hope we are wrong about how bad someone is. I would have liked to know why Annie was buying and her family background to understand what drove her to do so. I also wanted to know what really happened because a vague supposition wasn’t really an answer. I wanted to know more about Annie and Sara’s relationship and how they came to fall in love and if anyone ever knew that they were in love and that’s why Sara cared so much. Dave—Annie’s brother—knew, but I wondered about Sara’s other friends. Gosh, the pain Sara felt with seeing Dave all grown-up and thinking how he looked like Annie in some ways. That’s hard.
I FREAKING CACKLED when Dave and Sara dumped Eugene’s car in the river 😂!!!! As he deserved 👏🏼👏🏼!!!!! Honesty, he deserved so much worse for what he did to Sara and Grant, and probably Annie.
Sara said don’t you FREAKING MESS WITH ME OR COME FOR ME AGAIN.
But you know what, I gotta appreciate how Eugene knew why Sara dumped his car in the river and that he knew he deserved it too.
At least, he knew he was trash 😆. We appreciate a self-aware trash king.
Sara’s relationship with Spencer was also interesting. I would have liked to see more of their complicated brother-sister relationship because it seemed like Sara really loved her brother and wanted him around more but Spencer was always gone. I understand why Spencer wanted to stay when Sara asked if he wanted to come with her to leave their hometown. His whole life was in that town and he wasn’t ready to say goodbye yet to it, so it made sense. However, when they saw each other after all these years, I could understand how awkward and foreign it must have felt to see someone you thought you knew and see someone cxmptlelty different—to see all the details and nuances of how someone changed and to feel sad or at a loss for words that you weren’t there for all those changes. It almost feels like grieving how you weren’t part of someone’s growth.
I would have liked to see them have more conversations like if Spencer was angry at Sara that she left or that they stopped having as much contact. I also wanted to see them talk to each other more than just Spencer staying at her new place now that the dad was gone and then him hanging out with his girlfriend. I wanted heart-to-hearts because Sara loved her brother and I could tell.
Emilie, our other main protagonist.
I loved how Emilie had a different story, but still a heavy feel.
“My entire adult life . . . I’ve been waiting for my sister to love me again.”
(pg. 94)
Emilie had a complicated relationship with her sister, Colette who also battled addiction and nearly lost her life. I could also feel how much Emilie loved Colette and wanted a better relationship with Colette, but it was difficult to have conversations with each other without crossing a line or going to far into being overbearing. But I understood why Emilie would be overbearing because she was concerned and that concern came out of how much love she had for Colette. I did want more conversations between Emilie and Colette that didn’t feel like passing conversations, but actual deep thoughts with each other. Because after that first scene where we met Emilie, it was when Colette was found in the bathroom. Then the next scene was a time jump and everything was fine. But I wanted them to at least talk about what happened and how they could heal together because what happened effected Emile too.
Colette also had an interesting side storyline in the way she went to some cultish healing house on the beach where she found peace, which I mean, good for her. But I wanted to know more about if Colette really was healing and if she did have those moments of relapses that Emilie was worried about.
Emilie and Sara had very similar qualities too—hard-workers and they both lacked a sense of direction.
Emilie had been cruising in college as an undergrad for many years, switching her major just when she had all the credits to graduate with that degree. I don’t know if Emile was scared of becoming a real adult and that’s what stopped her from graduating and doing something with her life or she genuinely didn’t know what called to her. For the latter, I understand. Not everyone knows what they want to do when they go to college, when they are in college, or heck, even after college. The world is full of possibilities and those possibilities open up after high school, and it’s difficult to know what direction to take when you don’t know what you’re passionate about. College is the place to explore different areas of study to find that passion, but I feel like Emilie never found that passion, but was always on the cusp of something she was interested in. Also, sis must have had a lot of money to be paying for all these college classes all these years because she really out here PAYING 😂.
“She existed outside of her life and she knew it.”
(pg. 89)
Not for me. I don’t want that student loan debt. You would think she would try to get out of college faster because of it, but I guess sis had the money.
I really got the sense that Emile had no idea what she was doing and that she was very passive in her life, which was okay because we all feel that way, especially when we are first figuring things out. I liked how Emilie explored different jobs because that helped her to develop work ethic and see what she liked and what she didn’t like. I thought it was cool she arranged flowers at Yerba Buena. Now when I say that I felt Emilie didn’t have a sense for what she was doing, I mean it in a nice way because I felt like she only liked Jacob—-the restaurant owner—because she lacked a sense of direction. Again, no harsh judgement or anything, but I just felt like she liked the idea and attention Jacob was giving her because she didn’t know what she wanted or that she felt lonely. I have been there, felt that. I liked the attention of someone and the idea of someone rather than the actual person. I mean, I liked the actual person, but more so the attention and idea. But that kind of feeling comes from not feeling sure of yourself and what you want from others and life, so you hope to find it with someone else who can show you what you want or who can tell you what you want. I also feel like liking the idea or attention of someone comes from a place of wanting to be seen because no one had given you that sort of attention before to feel special, and we all want to be noticed and feel special.
Emilie knew what she was doing with Jacob was wrong because he was married and had a family. I liked how she talked herself down from engaging in anything more with him because she didn’t want to be “the other woman” or the reason that the family broke up because Jacob was having an affair with her. That’s not easy to cut off a relationship even if it feels right, yet wrong. I also kind of respected Jacob for agreeing to call off their relationship because he knew how wrong it was to go behind his families back. But for him, I think the relationship was new and exciting like all new things are. Not that I think Jacob is a saint because he wasn’t. He literally cheated on his wife and family with one of his workers and snuck off with her to the woods in a cabin he probably frequents with his family. But I respected that he respected when Emilie called it off. It made sense Emilie didn’t want to work at Yerba Buena after that.
When Emilie did return to Yerba Buena with her sister at the end, it was interesting to see how Jacob still liked her but knew their relationship was wrong. I also felt it was fine that he needed to set some boundaries between himself and Emilie. I mean, whatever he felt was best for himself and the situation. But someone should still tell his wife that he cheated on her because I believe she derives to know.
Emilie went to take care of her grandmother Claire for some time. I liked how she cared for her grandmother, reading her letters and keeping her company. No one should ever have to be alone. But that must have been pretty heavy to be with her grandmother everyday, knowing that something would happen to her, but not knowing when. And when it did happen and you knew it, it still hurts. Even more so to know that you had all this time with this person until the end, and to see them gone . . . it’s not easy. It’s so much pain and loss.
So much loss.
But you can’t say Emilie wasn’t resilient and open.
I really felt like Emilie found herself in flipping houses or remodeling. I loved how that became her passion because she was good at it and I could see how much happiness glowed from her. When she started remodeling houses, I saw Emilie in a new light—-she was so much more confident, driven, and had a purpose. She no longer floated in college or from job to job because she didn’t know where she belonged. She just belonged and I loved that for her. Seeing Emilie’s change was such a stark contrast from the girl who arranged flowers and didn’t know what she was doing in college or her career to someone who was creating something from nothing and owning a big house on the hill that she could call her own. I was incredibly proud of her.
“I was a vase.
She’d stepped into this shop, introduced herself, asked for a job, hoped it would feel her. And then, for a time, sitting with Jacob at the community table, she’d been a flower. Snipped from the root, quick to wilt, temporary. She’d existed to be lovely and to be chosen. No one had expected her to last.
But she hadn’t been a flower when she’d gone to live with Claire, had she?
. . . Water, she decided. That’s what she’d been with Claire. Shapeless, colorless, necessary. She’d done what she had to. She had been there for her grandmother. She’d kept her family afloat.”
(pg. 287)
When she started at Yerba Buena, it was as a hopeful girl who didn’t know what she wanted in life. She wanted something to give her purpose, to fill her like a vase. She wanted someone to need her like Jacob seemed to need her—to be chosen from someone. When she was caring for her grandmother, Emilie was water because she was going through emotions of life and where it took her. She didn’t need something to fill her because she was the filling.
But I loved how she was back to her roots in this flower shop a the end and she wanted to buy Yerba Buena—-the healing plant that started it all. I felt like her being in the flower shop wanting to buy a flower symbolized how she was now the plant—-she was healing and working towards a future that didn’t seem so bleak.
And I think that was the point of Emilie and Sara’s stories—-two woman who had been through so much and didn’t have any direction, but they were healing and finding somewhere to go. They were finding home in places they never thought they would go and with people they never thought to find. And that’s life.
“They would understand each other, make room for each other. Each of them driven, each of them in love.”
(pg. 290)
We all experience hardships and we all carry trauma, burdens and issues that we work through alone. But we need never have to truly face what we are going through alone. We can let people in when we are ready to share parts of ourselves—to make room for other people to help us through and to let their stories heal us and guide us. We can let love in and do things our of love. We can take care of ourselves and our peace out of love. We can take care of others out of love. There is so much love in everything we do, and there is so much room for other people to help you and love you if you let them.
I will admit, I wasn’t a huge fan of the romance in this book because it felt too instantaneous and didn’t have much depth. I wanted more conversations of Sara and Emile knowing each other and what they had both been through because I felt like their interactions were very minimal and more intimate. I wanted them to understand each other or to see them talk about what they had been through because they were very similar people and it didn’t seem like they knew that. I mean, were they only together because like calls to like? I don’t know. All we knew was that Emilie and Sara liked each other because they locked eyes and Sara liked Emilie’s flower arrangements. Love at first sight maybe, but I just wanted more. I wanted to feel the love between them or to get to the root of their relationship.
But I also don’t know if this book was supposed to focus on romance. If it wasn’t, then it’s understandable why the romance wasn’t strong. There was just a lot of emotions and events that carried the characters and this story along—very complicated and yet a Yerba Buena vibe if that’s a thing. The whole book felt like a salve over a wound and we were reading the moments where things came together and looked a little less hurt and a lot more peaceful.
I also wanted more dynamics, if that makes sense. A little bit of oomph or something that made me really pause of feel something stronger. My emotions throughout the book were pretty steady and calm because it was a very emotion and sensory experience, but I wanted something that made me really think or feel something profound.
Overall, Yerba Buena captured the feeling of healing and finding a home with other people in shared pain and knowing that no one ever has to experience pain or hardship alone. Healing takes time and it’s not an easy journey. Healing can be an ugly journey. It can be falling down and scraping yourself time and time again until something clicks and feels better. Healing can be bleeding again and again until one day it just stops and you start to move on. Healing can be going into the same cycles over and over until one day you had enough and you want to change. Healing looks and feels different for everyone and it’s not always going to be perfect or make something what it once was.
We all become different people because of our pain and because of the way we heal.
It’s how we choose to carry that pain and how we choose how and when to let the healing begin.
To all of you going through something, you are not alone. Let yourself feel what you need to feel. But find room to let others in when you are ready. Heal when you are ready. If you need to mess up along the way towards getting better, that’s okay. It happens. But heal when you are ready. It’s a difficult path to take to choose to heal, but it will always lead you home to yourself and to where you are meant to be one day.
If you read this book, what was your favorite part? Least favorite part? Let me know below in the comments as I love hearing from you all 💕
I hope you have a beautiful day whenever and wherever you might be reading this.
And as always, with love,
Rating
3.42 Full Bloom Flowers
Characters: I liked how similar Emilie and Sara was, but how they had different journeys with who they were and who they were becoming. Both very strong women with good hearts and good work ethic.
Plot: Yerba Beuna feels like the plant itself—-healing, peaceful, and a touch of heartache
Writing: Nina LaCour knows how to capture a mood, a feeling, and an idea in a moving story meant to heal
Romance: Not the most romantic book and I wanted to see more depth between Emilie and Sara’s love.