Reviews tagging 'Physical abuse'

Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo

6 reviews

celery's review against another edition

dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad slow-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

4.75

How many different words do you need to describe a vagina?

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Death, Deportation, Domestic abuse, Abandonment, Ableism, Child death, Classism, Gun violence, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Murder, Physical abuse, Sexism, Sexual content, Stalking, Toxic friendship, Violence, Grief, Medical content, Misogyny, Gore, Racism, Sexual harassment, Death of parent, Drug use, Excrement, Fatphobia, Gaslighting, Infidelity, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Vomit, Animal death, Incest, Infertility, Injury/Injury detail, Addiction, Alcohol, Blood, Emotional abuse, Pregnancy, Hate crime, Medical trauma, Panic attacks/disorders, Body shaming, Car accident, Child abuse, Colonisation, Confinement, Cursing, and Sexual assault

stephmcoakley's review

challenging emotional mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Alcoholism, Infertility, Infidelity, Child abuse, Mental illness, Police brutality, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Death of parent, Forced institutionalization, and Miscarriage

akamm's review against another edition

emotional hopeful reflective 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? No

4.0

I stopped this book mid way through while life happened. For a while, I didn't feel a need to pick it back up, but when I did, I realized the magic of this story. This story is comfortable and warm. Even though some of the content is not easy, the storytelling is like a night with your family.

Each character really grew and I enjoyed how they loved each other.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content, Infidelity, and Physical abuse

serendipitysbooks's review against another edition

emotional reflective 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

4.0

 I didn’t have the best of starts with Family Lore, struggling to remember the characters and follow the plot. I thought format may be the issue so grabbed an e-book from Libby. That - particularly the family tree at the front - helped a lot, but I didn’t enjoy hearing myself mangle the Spanish words and phrases in my head. Tandem reading, reading and listening simultaneously, was the charm giving me the best of both worlds.

The book begins with Flor deciding to hold a living wake for herself. Most of the story unfolds in the two days prior to the wake and during the wake itself, but is infused with plenty of memories from the recent and more distant past. The story itself is a matrilineal family saga focussing on Flor, her three sisters Matilde, Pastora and Camila, Flor’s daughter Ona, and Pastora’s daughter Yadi; their lives in the Dominican Republic and in the United States. Each woman came up against a fair amount of misogyny (many of the men in their lives do not come across well), and between them they experienced many other tough things including infertility, infidelity, migration, physical, emotional and sexual abuse. The bonds between the women may have been complicated but they were strong, much like the women themselves. They had all experienced pain and hardship but knew how to find moments of joy as well. There was an element of magical realism in the book with each woman having a particular power or gift, but I never felt as if this artificially drove the plot; rather each woman’s power was just part of who they were. Ona is an anthropology professor and has been interviewing her family members for a possible project and parts of these interviews are included. I enjoy a little textual variety so this worked for me. Acevedo’s prose was very lyrical, no surprise given her background as a poet and the incorporation of plenty of Spanish felt really appropriate and reflective of the family’s identity.

Overall I enjoyed this novel and found the women’s positive character arcs to be satisfying. However, it didn’t surpass her YA novels in my affections.
 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Infertility, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Infidelity, Mental illness, and Sexual assault

cadence99's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful reflective 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

4.0

This was a fantastic first read for me from Elizabeth Acevedo. Her writing is deeply lyrical, and drew me in so easily to the narrative of this family’s story. Thought it’s not normally my favorite format, I REALLY loved the shifting points of view and flashes back and forth between timelines here. In written form, the flow felt so natural, weaving in remembrances of life as the book simultaneously works toward its conclusion. However, I’m really glad that I read a physical copy and not audio, because I think I would’ve had a much more difficult time following the narrative. 

One think I didn’t LOVE here was that it felt VERY clear that the author was making their debut into adult fiction- there is no mistaking that there are adult themes at play, to an extent that they felt overused. 

This book was an emotional, funny, and hopeful anthology of a family’s love. It left me feeling deeply connected to the characters and to their history

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content, Death of parent, Miscarriage, Physical abuse, Abandonment, Emotional abuse, Infertility, Medical trauma, Violence, Alcohol, Grief, Pregnancy, Alcoholism, Body horror, Child abuse, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Infidelity, and Misogyny

Minor: Ableism, Classism, and Colonisation

mandi_lea's review against another edition

reflective slow-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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Physical abuse, Infidelity, Infertility, Grief, Death, Sexual content, Alcohol, and Child abuse