Yerba Buena: A Novel

Written by Nina LaCour

Narrated by Julia Whelan

"Full of sensory details, vivid characters, and moment after moment of gorgeously rendered ordinary life, this audiobook is a queer must-listen." -AudioFile

This program is masterfully narrated by award-winning "Golden Voice" narrator Julia Whelan.

Yerba Buena is 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.

A Most Anticipated Book (Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, The Washington Post, Vulture, NBC News, Good Housekeeping, Parade, Electric Lit, BookRiot, Bustle, Goodreads, LGBTQ Reads, Autostraddle, Veranda Magazine, The Lesbian Review, and more)

“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

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.

A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Audio
• Release date: May 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781250837837

Nina LaCour

Reconhecida autora de vários livros YA aclamados pela crítica e vencedores de prémios e distinções, Nina LaCour já viu a sua obra traduzida em mais de uma dezena de países. Yerba Buena é o seu livro de estreia na ficção adulta e foi recebido com muito entusiasmo. Residente em São Francisco, Nina LaCour adora cozinhar, fazer jardinagem e passear pelas inspiradoras paisagens do norte da Califórnia com a sua mulher e a filha de ambas.

Reviews for Yerba Buena

[Emma Rivera · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Probably one of my favorite “visionary” books. I saw and felt everything.

[strilinga · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

this was beautiful and so entertaining in all of its difficulty to digest (the triggering subjects)

[Kayla Pratt · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This, was intense

It was REALLY good. But definitely intense. Everyone was dealing with their own brand of fucked up. It's kind of sad, but made for a pretty good book.

4 stars

[Victoria Edelsbrunner · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A beautiful book. Sad and hopeful and so very emotional.

[Jade Watts · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Sad, beautifully written- not a book to escape into when you’re feeling the realness of the world, but certainly a book to guide you in feeling your own heartbreak

[Clarisse14 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In this short novel, we accompany the lives of two young American women from different places and with no connection: Emilie and Sara, whom we see grow and mature until they meet in their early adulthood once we understand their childhoods, their concerns, and their fears. Emilie has lived her life in California, feeling incomplete and struggling not only with not knowing what to do with her life but also with a dysfunctional relationship with her drug-addicted sister; while Sara lived until she was 16 in a small town, lost her mother, had an absent and drug-dealing father, and was forced to be the maternal substitute for her younger brother; the person she loved most, her girlfriend Annie, drowned, and filled with pain, she escaped her town with a stranger (yes, at 16) and arrived in California, where Emilie has always lived. Eventually, our two protagonists meet, and we see how a relationship forms with a particularly liberating perspective, as they create something that is completely permissive of each other's individuality, and we see how both build themselves separately and deal with their pasts and worries independently; they are completely independent of their own relationship, which makes it a temple of pure peace and affection, where everything bad that enters can transform into something good. It is a relationship based on being liberating, which is what I liked most about the book. However, and it pains me to say it, as I hold Nina LaCour in high regard (and plan to continue reading her), the book feels completely incomplete; the scenes are fleeting just like the feelings, everything moves quickly while pretending to be profound. It has a very interesting initial premise, however, it is executed... Weakly. (Translated from Spanish)