Reviews with content warning for Child death - The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina

I want to give this a score of infinite. I have never and will never read a book that delighted me as much as this one. It gave off a Silvia Moreno-Garcia vibe mixed with Encanto but only if Encanto didn’t have the jovial numbers by Lin-Manuel Miranda. The twist was stunning and sad and the final two chapters left me in tears because it was over but I immediately wanted to close the book and start it over again. I have spent my life running from my Montoya last name but, for the first time ever, I feel like embracing it.

Content Warnings

paisleypetty's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

althebookworm's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

thebakerbookworm's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I love a good family drama, and this book had all those elements plus magic so I definitely enjoyed it! It was also really good on audio, though I will say there are a lot of characters and I did get them confused sometimes. I would have loved a family tree, but not sure if the print book has one—does anyone know?

So as I said, there are a lot of characters, but I would say Marimar is the main character and she gets the most development and attention. I liked that we got different perspectives throughout though, from different family members. They all get some nice development and complexity, though I would've liked to learn a bit more about some of the other family members (there were just so many, some of them I still didn't know by the end).

We also have a dual timeline, with the present-day events unfolding as we slowly learn about Orquídea's past. I will say that probably for the first half of the book, the past timeline is much more interesting than the present. The present gets interesting but it takes a while to get there. Events do get crazy and the magic in this story is really intriguing, though there's not a lot of world building; you just have to accept the magic for what it is.

Anyways, I really enjoyed this one and would definitely recommend if you like magical realism mixed with a family drama spread across generations.

Thanks to Libro.fm, Simon and Schuster Audio, and the author for my ALC!

Content Warnings