Yerba Buena - by Nina Lacour

Book Synopsis

"A love story for our time." --Tara Conklin, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Romantics

This book is a precious thing. --Casey McQuiston, New York Times bestselling author of One Last Stop

The debut adult novel by the bestselling and award-winning YA author Nina LaCour, following two women on a star-crossed journey toward each other

When Sara Foster runs away from home at sixteen, she leaves behind 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, yearning for the beauty and community her Creole grandparents cultivated but 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.

The morning Emilie and Sara first meet 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 trying to find somewhere, or someone, to call home.

Review Quotes

Praise for Yerba Buena

A Most AnticipatedBook (Vogue, The Washington Post, Vulture, Electric Lit, BookRiot, Bustle, Goodreads, LGBTQ Reads, Autostraddle, Veranda Magazine, Bookish, The Nerd Daily, East Bay Express, The Lesbian Review)

"A lesbian love story for the ages."
--Vogue

"A poignant, beautiful novel."
--TheWashington Post

"The sumptuousness of the prose and its reflections of Southern California--its food, its drink, its intimacies--will make you want to take a long, slow drive along an ocean vista."
--Vulture

"LaCour's beautiful and often heartbreaking books have destroyed and delighted me many times over. In fact, her incredibly insightful queer YA novels never let me down and so I am definitely quivering with anticipation for Yerba Buena...This seems like a gloriously melancholy book to read as I hide from the cold outside world, snuggled on my sofa under a warm, fuzzy blanket. Can't wait."
--BookRiot

A heartbreakingly beautiful story about two lost women who somehow find each other and in doing so find themselves.
--Electric Lit

"A tenderand at times heartbreaking love story between two women finding their way inlife...A delicately devastating and beautifully perceptive journey."
--Bust Magazine

"Enthralling."
--Bustle

"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."
--Booklist (starred review)

"LaCour writes with beauty and clarity about how a relationship is not a substitute for the characters' mutual need to love themselves."
--Publishers Weekly

"The rawness of Sara's and Emilie's struggles come through, making for a heartfelt story.
A brisk, plot-driven, and entertaining novel."
--Kirkus

Yerba Buena is at turns decadent and spare, intimate and elusive, as balanced, fragrant, and masterfully crafted as a fine cocktail in the hands of someone mysterious and beautiful. This book is a precious thing.
--Casey McQuiston, New York Times bestselling author of One Last Stop

"Nina LaCour's Yerba Buena is a love story for our time. I so admired its truth and candor, the lilting prose and the two compelling protagonists, Sara and Emilie, whose lives weave, break and bend towards each other until the novel's moving and deeply satisfying conclusion. Yerba Buena is an absolute joy to read."
--Tara Conklin, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Romantics

"Nina LaCour's writing is so evocative that it's hard to put down (I read Yerba Buena in one day). The attention to detail allows you to be transported--you can just about taste the food, be in the rooms, and even feel the feelings the characters are experiencing."
--Julia Turshen, New York Times bestselling author of Simply Julia and more cookbooks

"Tactile, tender and intimate, Yerba Buena is a gorgeous, sensory exploration of life's richest moments. Led by two soulful and complex women, it is a joy to read."
--Charlotte McConaghy, New York Times bestselling author of Once There Were Wolves and Migrations

Yerba Buena tells two lovely, tangled, gorgeously-detailed coming-of-age stories. It is a novel full of heartbreak and hope, food and flowers, complication and compromise, love and loss and lessons learned the hard way. But especially love.
--Laurie Frankel, New York Times bestselling author of One Two Three and This Is How It Always Is

"Yerba Buena is not just a book to read; it's a story to revel in, so full is it of sensual pleasures--food and flowers, cocktails and home decor--all of it enveloping a sexy, magnetic and unputdownable love story of two young women fighting their way past family demons and toward each other. This is Nina LaCour's best work yet."
--Gayle Forman, New York Times bestselling author of If I Stay and We Are Inevitable

"Such a sublimely crafted narrative about the truths our hearts hold and the lies it tells to protect us, of the paths that carve us and the ones we carve for ourselves, of reckonings and reconcilings. Nina LaCour has written an affecting, gratifying, and memorable love letter to beginnings in the way only Nina LaCour can. Gorgeous."
--Courtney Summers, New York Times bestselling author of Sadie

About the Author

Nina LaCour is the award-winning and bestselling author of several novels for young adults, including We Are Okay, a Printz Award winner and national bestseller. She lives in San Francisco with her wife and daughter. Yerba Buena is her first novel for adults