4.5, beautiful coming of age story

Beautiful, heartbreaking, and hopeful with an incredible sense of place in both central and Southern California. I will be thinking about Sara and Emilie for a long time.

The story of Emilie and Sara, the tragic events that brought them together and keep them apart.

Heavy story line with bits of lovely.

So stunning and engaging. The story had me completely engrossed from the very beginning and delivered a beautiful ending as well! I found the third act conflict fulfilling instead of following unreasonable logic as well, which is hard to find with romance. Five stars alllll the way

Loved this one! Found myself unable to stop thinking about the characters throughout my days. Sara and Emilie each had such unique passions (I’d never before thought about how much care and thought can go into crafting cocktails and floral arrangements). Experiencing each woman’s evolution enthralled me - how they were both able to find the unique beauty and purpose they were searching for, but in realistic ways that intersected with their loss, pain, and grief. Beautifully written, with rich descriptions of the settings and remarkable depth of emotion.

Thank you for the birthday gift, Dana!

Utterly
Delicious

just could not get into it and tbh their love story felt too forced?

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for providing me an e-arc of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

While a novel for emerging adults, this book has many of the same themes of LaCour's earlier YA works, but with added life milestones which will appeal to LaCour's dedicated fans who have now moved into post-high school life. The novel is character driven, focused on the lives of two young women named Sara and Emilie. It has themes of finding oneself, recovery from past trauma and loss, family relationships, and of course there is a wlw romance.

I enjoyed the slow pace of this novel. It was almost dreamlike in the narration and the detail put into the settings really brought the book to life. I was under the impression that this book was going to be a romance from early on, but instead the reader really gets to know the characters--Sara, who ran away when she was 16 after her father predicted that her missing best friend/secret girlfriend would be found dead in the river, and Emilie, whose life is at a standstill after seven years of undergrad and too much pressure to be the one with her shit together. Toward the end they get together, after their paths have crossed multiple times over years inside a restaurant called Yerba Buena.

I listened to the audiobook version and I must say that I think the reader was an ideal choice for this work. Her narration is dreamy, fluid, and easy to listen to.