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Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for providing me an ARC to review. These Ghosts Were Family is a dark family saga that carries us through multiple generations of a family with Jamaican roots. Each chapter depicts the struggles of a different member of the family and tackles issues of addiction, death, lies, slavery, and abuse. It was quite intriguing and I enjoyed getting to know each of the family members and their struggles, although some chapters were definitely stronger than others. The last chapter, while interesting, seemed oddly out of place and starkly different from the rest of the novel. The addition of Jamaican pronunciations made it a bit difficult to read at first. Though not a long novel, this was not a quick read.

A love multi generational novels and I LOVED this one! What an amazing debut. Lots of adventure, but also lots of emotion. Do not miss this one.

"These Ghosts Are Family" was one of my most anticipated releases of 2020. I could not wait to start it. However, I was disappointed. The speculative writing style in this book was just not for me. It was very hard to get into/ connect with anything going on, and sadly, I could not finish. Because of this, I will not be giving this book a rating at this time. Hopefully in the future, I can revisit it.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I was eager to read this book as it is a most anticipated book of 2020.

This is a do not finish book for me. The first part of the book is not written in first or third person. It is in a style such as introductions and events are introduced " Say you this and say you that". With this style, it is hard to understand and become connected to the book. The introduction of a book is everything and I think the author should have started the book out in a style that would grab readers attention.

These Ghosts Are Family is an incredible debut novel by Maisy Card. I was incredibly intrigued by the comparisons to Homegoing, as well as the focus on a Jamaican family, a voice that I don't come across very often. Multi-generational sagas have been my jam lately and this is definitely near the top of my list when recommending this genre to friends. The story opens with a complicated marriage and a lie that creates the tidal wave that effects multiple family members over the next 75 years.

I would describe These Ghosts as Family as first a family/generational drama that transcends culture, but it inclues rich cultural descriptions and history informing and influencing the family drama. The separate-but-connected stories require the reader to pay attention to names and family connections as it bounces between different times/generations but there is a family tree if you start to feel lost. None of the stories, except for maybe a couple have resolutions or clean endings but that's what makes it feel authentic. I hope to see more from Maisy Card in the future!

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This novel covers the legitimate and illegitimate offspring of a skaving family in Jamaica. The cruelty of slavery is interspersed with the beauty of the Jamaican culture and the ability of the slaves and their descendants to thrive in spite of their circumstances.

A novel about a Jamaican man working in England faking his death and the subsequent consequences for his family. These Ghosts are Family starts out strong, but unravels into loosely related stories.

Multigenerational story from Jamaica to Queens. Starts with a family secret/intrigue and goes from there. I struggled a bit with the phonetically written dialog.

A set of interconnected stories (though written as a novel) about the people whose lives were impacted by the faked death of Abel Paisley 30 years before. Spanning colonial Jamaica to present day New York City and times and places in between, we live alongside his “widow” as she struggles with single motherhood, the children from his two lives that are unaware of each other’s existence, and Abel (ow Stanford Soloman) himself.

The writing is excellent and full of raw emotion — and the emotions are not happy ones. Anger, need, guilt, and bitterness pervade the colorful surroundings. Plenty of drama — affairs, unwanted pregnancies, drug addiction. This is not a community of happy people and although the writing was excellent, I found it a bit heavy. I did enjoy the brief recap of Rastafarianism and their belief in worshiping Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia as the living God — I had forgotten all of that.

For now, more towards the publishing date.

An amazing novel, a must read, One of the the best historical novel, describing Jamaica, it's people, traditions, superstitions, I have read many novels and historical novels regarding Jamaica, Maisy Card is an author to admire and follow.

The premise of These Ghosts Are Family is fantastic - the elderly Stanford Solomon has decided to reveal to his family that he is actually Abel Paisley, a man who stole the identity of his dead best friend. Abel remains a mystery for much of the book - which I don't really mind - and the bulk of his story is recounted by his female relatives: his first wife and their eldest daughter, his granddaughter from his second marriage, his illegitimate daughter from an affair. This contemporary family drama is intertwined with accounts of their enslaved ancestors in colonial Jamaica.

Maisy Card is a fantastic writer, but it would be fairer to call this book a collection of interconnected short stories - it is a little too disjointed for a novel. I think it really suffers from lacking a chapter from the perspective of Vera, Abel's second wife, and glimpses into their daughter's childhood. And while the last chapter, on its own, is an excellent ghost story, it ends the novel on a bizarre note as no magical realism had been present before.