Emilie’s family is also marked by addiction and the resulting dysfunction leaves her without a true sense of self. Sara is raised by a single dad, surrounded by addiction and poverty, and leaves home at 16 after an unspeakable tragedy. We get to know Sara and Emilie individually before we know them as a couple. Nina LaCour tells a story that is altogether different from the love stories I’ve read before: this one is gritty, nuanced, heartbreaking, and achingly real.Īnother thing that makes this story so special is how the two protagonists, Sara Foster and Emilie Dubois, come to life on the page. But Yerba Buena may have cured me of my disdain for love stories.
I know, I know-I’m in the minority here, but I always end up annoyed by one of the primary characters or eye-rolling at the romantic parts. (Feb.I admit that I rarely find love stories appealing. This doesn’t break new ground, but it gets the job done. 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. 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. 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. 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. Now she’s a bartender whose signature cocktails are in high demand at the popular restaurant Yerba Buena. Sara Foster ran away from home at 16 after her girlfriend died under mysterious circumstances that may have involved Sara’s family. 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.
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