Reviews with content warning for Death - Family Lore

I struggled with this book a lot. I wanted and expected to love it since The Poet X was one of my favorite reads of last year and I thought Clap When You Land was really excellent too. I’m not a YA reader generally so I assumed Acevedo’s adult writing would be even more up my alley! But this took me over two weeks to finish because I just struggled to keep reaching for it and the pace felt so disjointed and slow and somehow just overall exhausting. I ended up finally having to switch formats — I love Acevedo’s voice and her reading in the two YA novels of hers was so memorable for me — and that made it possible for me to finish; I think otherwise it would have maybe taken weeks more and possibly ended as a DNF for me.

I was baffled and honestly a little upset to not love this because I think EA is such a remarkable writer and her characters and worlds are so vivid and real. I think that the constant switching of viewpoints here and the constant switching of timelines was part of it for me. Though these are devices I actually often love, here they made the characters feel so separated and their journeys so walled off, even though their stories are so intertwined. By the time the final chapters arrived and we were at the long-awaited living wake, actually seeing the characters interact in real time for me had much the most emotional and touching writing in the book, and seeing that made me acutely aware of what I had missed elsewhere in the novel.

I guess I will also say that I left a little puzzled — and was throughout — about the peculiar ways sexuality and very graphic writing about it played in each woman’s story and sense of identity. I am NOT averse to vivid writing about women’s sexuality, but somehow I felt like it was so emphasized and repeated in the emphasis that there was either an over-exerted point (about…women’s sexuality being normal? Or ???) or — at this rate I should probably say and/or — perhaps that there was a point about it that simply wasn’t quite effectively made by my reading. Either way there was a way in which the sex writing, like a lot of the POV devices and hyper-segmenting of the book in general, felt like it was being juxtaposed onto these many (compelling and basically quite memorable) characters; and that as such it took on a slight remove that was peculiarly not resonant with the people and the stories the book asked us to love and examine.

I don’t know — overall not like, awful by any means, but I was sad over and over again to not truly enjoy this one. I will definitely keep an eye out for more of Acevedo’s work and perhaps accept that with her I’m more a YA reader.

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grumpyreading's review

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emotional reflective slow-paced

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

4.0

📚 Review: I am such a huge fan of Elizabeth Acevedo. Her writing is so poetic and beautiful, I found myself having to stop and re-read certain passages in this book just to re-experience the writing. I loved these characters and this story, and the magical realism aspects in this. While I did find it a little slow and wasn’t as drawn into the story and the tension as I was with Acevedo’s other books, this was absolutely beautiful and such a great reflection on family, truth, influence, who we are, and how we connect to place and time. I can’t wait for her next book.

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