Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo

A great family saga filled with unique characters and situations, plus a little magical realism thrown in.

I liked the connectivity between different members of the family, how they saw themselves and each other.

Thanks to @netgalley and @eccobooks for this advanced copy!

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Family Lore was such a pleasant surprise for me! I typically really struggle with magical realism, but this was such a fantastic take on the genre. The cast of characters in this generational drama was VAST, but I thought Acevedo did a phenomenal job delving into their respective lives, and I was truly invested in all of their stories. The only thing that didn't quite work for me was the resolution. There was so much build up to those final chapters, and I felt like the end was just a little anticlimactic. It had so much potential to be truly powerful and heartwrenching, and it just didn't quite get there for me. This was my first book by the author, and I'm looking forward to reading Acevedo's other works. Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review!

Genre: Magical Realism/Contemporary

Format: Audio

4🌟 - I liked it!

Thank you @eccobooks for the #gifted copy and @librofm for the complimentary audio!

A story of multigenerational women, a touch of magic, and woven with culture paired with poetic prose. I loved reading @acevedowrites adult debut, and thought the audio was done well!

Stories of women, motherhood, and sisterhood are always so meaningful and impactful, and I loved reading it through the lens of a Latinx author.

Such a strong family saga that fans of Acevedo will enjoy and be surprised by her adult book in the best kind of way 💙

This is a beautifully written book about family, love and loss. Heartbreaking in some sections but these brave women will make you cheer for them during the good times, cry during the hard times and be ready to fight during the mad times! Elizabeth Acevedo brought all of the magic from her YA writing to her first adult fiction book. I hope there's more where this one came from!

Having been raised with three sisters living next door to my grandparents, I definitely related to this multi-generational female-driven book. It’s covers themes of family, sisterly bonds, secrets, and history. I am a big fan of these types of books. The book is told from multiple POVs and across different timelines. Between that and the frequency Spanish, it can be difficult to keep up with who is saying what, but the overall tone and premise of the book were enjoyable. I fell in love with the characters and truly wished for them to get all they were hoping for.

I didn't hate this book but I didn't love it either. Hence the 2 stars. The premise was interesting but the writing seemed disjointed in a lot of places so it was hard to follow. Also scattered throughout were sentences written in Spanish that I did not understand so I feel I lost part of the story by not knowing Spanish.

The story of one Dominican-American family is told through the voices of its women as they await a gathering that will forever change their lives.

Flor has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. So when she decides she wants a living wake--a party to bring her family and community together to celebrate the long life she's led--her sisters are surprised. Has Flor foreseen her own death, or someone else's? Does she have other motives?

The book alternates between 5 women after Flor. We get snippets of Flor's sisters and her daughter's life.
I wish I could say I loved the book but unfortunately, I struggled with connecting with the characters.
I love sister books but this one fell a bit short.
Another grouse I had was that there's a lot of Spanish in this book, which isn't translated so it gets a bit frustrating.

This book might not have worked for me but I will read more from the author because they are very talented.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I was so excited for this adult debut because I’ve been a huge fan of Elizabeth Acevedo. Family Lore was well written with her usual lyrical voice. I found the characters to be a bit much and I had a hard time getting attached to them. It may have been that there were a lot of characters or just that there were a bunch of storylines because I usually really get attached to Acevedo’s characters.

Unfortunately I just couldn't get into this one. I hoped that as I kept reading I would fall in love just like I did with Acevedo's other bools (Clap When You Land was a solid 5 stars for me), but I never got there. It was a bit disappointing!

Unfortunately this one did not work for me. I really liked this authors ya books and loved her narrating them in prose but I really didn’t like her narration with this book and the prose wasn’t working for me at all.

I finished this book nearly a month ago and still have no idea how to put my thoughts into words. Ultimately, I read this book physically and that was probably a mistake because although Acevedo's words are stunning on their own, her narration has always brought her books to life for me in a way that my eyeballs and brain are ill-equipped to manage. But for me, the part that I think has left me so uncertain about how to think about this book is that I'm still not really sure I understand what the purpose of this book was. It's told from multiple perspectives, arguably too many, although I followed and mostly kept them all straight and separate from one another, and tells the story of the lives of these three sisters and some of their children in the lead up to (and thinking back on their history) Flo's living wake. There's magic that's interesting and I liked that part a lot. But ultimately, I think this is just one of those literary fiction books that has me going, "Oh, pretty writing! But, what did I just read?"

It's a departure from her YA books where even if they are slice of life, they are also always coming of age novels and are about these young women coming into their own. And perhaps here, in Family Lore if there had been slightly fewer perspectives, we could have had more of that? But honestly, I appreciate this book for what it is, but I'm not sure I get it. That said, I definitely think you should pick it up because Acevedo IS a stunning writer and the worlds she creates, although contemporary in setting, are lush and full of people that feel real.

Thank you Netgalley for this advanced audio edition of Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo.

I actually had to switch between reading this and listening to it in order to get the hang of the story telling style and the actual story. It wasn't necessarily an easy story to get into. It switches narrators a lot, and quickly, and it also goes back and forth on the timeline, which made it hard to keep track of who and when we were talking about. I think overall I still got it.

I really want to say that I loved this story. It had a great start, one of the family matriarch's planning her own living wake, and the response of her surrounding family members. I loved the all female cast, the Latina culture, the magic, all of it. But my aforementioned issues really got in the way of my ability to sink in and immerse in the story. I had to work way too hard to keep track of characters, and plot lines. It's a bummer, because dang it had potential!

I don’t think the writing style was for me. I just couldn’t connect to anyone and there were a lot of anyones lol the story was kinda slow and boring.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC

I loved this family saga about the Marte family. I loved following the six perspectives of the women and following their history and trials. This was touching and impactful.

I wanted to love this book so much but the magical realism didn't work for me. I struggled with connecting to the characters or caring about them. I have loved Acevedo's previous YA titles but this one was a miss for me.

Oh my heart. I feel like I've heard mixed things about this book, and I'm not sure why? My best guess is either the format (the flashbacks and physical format of the book were a bit jarring at first, but nothing I couldn't acclimate to by a quarter of the way in) or the magical realism aspect. As a Korean American who grew up hearing her mother talk about the importance of dreams, it really made me feel close to these women and feel like I understood especially the younger generation more. The book was well written and held my interest the entire time--though I do think the ending felt a little tame compared to the rest of the book. I will be recommending this to my patrons and friends who enjoy magical realism/multigenerational books.

I LOVE Elizabeth Acevedo and have adored every one of her previous works I have read. Sadly, this just wasn’t quite *IT* for me in the way I was expecting it to be. I can’t quite describe why, but the story felt discombobulated and I was struggling to mentally manage the family tree. She is a highly talented writer, no doubt, and I’ll continue to read everything she publishes.

TL;DR REVIEW:

Family Lore was right up my alley: beautiful, heartbreaking, and crackling with life. These characters are so well written, and Acevedo’s talent as a poet shines.

For you if: You like family sagas with many POVs, magical realism, and prose by poets.

FULL REVIEW:

If you can believe it, Family Lore was my first Elizabeth Acevedo. (I’ve always meant to read her books but they’ve just slipped through the cracks of my TBR every time!) And it’s no surprise that I liked it very much: a character-driven story about strong women and their relationships, magical realism, and prose by a poet? Sign me right up.

The book focuses on six women from the Dominican-American Marte family: Flor, Matilde, Pastora, and Camila (all sisters); plus Ona (Flor’s daughter) and Yadi (Pastora’s daughter). Nearly all of them have family “gifts,” and Flor’s is that she can see someone’s death ahead of time. So when she decides to throw herself a living wake but won’t say why, naturally everyone is concerned. At the same time, Matilde is reckoning with a lifelong bad marriage, Flor is struggling to conceive, and Yadi’s teenage love is suddenly back in town. The narrative bounces between them all, and between past and present, as we hurdle toward the wake.

This book isn’t going to be for everyone (especially if you have trouble keeping track of a lot of POV characters, are squeamish about bodily functions, or feel embarrassed by bold references to sex and sexuality), but there’s no denying Acevedo’s mastery here. It took me a bit to really get into the story — and I had to forgive some pretty glaring factual errors about my alma mater, Binghamton University (I’m 99% sure she originally wrote about Cornell but changed it at the last minute) lol — but once I did, I was all in. I found this book beautiful, heartbreaking, and crackling with life. These characters are so well written, and Acevedo’s talent as a poet means there are some really breathtaking sentences in here. Acevedo also reads the audiobook herself, which always leads to such a great listening experience.

I’m glad I read this one, and Acevedo’s backlist is more firmly on my TBR than ever.



CONTENT AND TRIGGER WARNINGS:
Infertility; Child abuse; Death of a parent; Infidelity; Sexual content

I love Elizabeth Acevedo books and was excited to read this one. I wasn't disappointed! I am so glad she has ventured into adult novels. Flor can predict to the day when someone will die and if that's not wild enough she decides to host a wake for herself....while she's still alive. Listen, I am just glad she wasn't some annoying MC with no character development. I think this is an awesome book club read.

The story is also told through a nonlinear format, through the eyes of the six Marte women. Each character has a strong enough voice that I rarely had to check back to the chapter heading to see whose head we were in at the moment. I absolutely love that the reader has each woman’s perspective through the novel, especially when it comes to how they viewed each other. While I wish we’d had a bit more closure on some of the characters, I understand that this was merely a snapshot of their layered and nuanced lives. I like knowing that each of the women had more than what was presented in this particular story, and that for most of them, this three-day-time period was the start of something new and life changing.

The pacing is slow, giving us time to really dive deep and get to know each character in relation to the others. I adore character-driven stories, where we get to know each one well enough to connect and understand their motivations. The women in this book are flawed in what feels like a realistic way, and apart from the “gifts” many of them possess, they seem like women we might know and love in our own lives.