Reviews with content warning for Emotional abuse - Family Lore

Reviews tagging 'Emotional abuse'

Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo

18 reviews

yvo_about_books's review against another edition

emotional reflective slow-paced

2.0

Finished reading: August 6th 2024

"It’s silly to have a nickname for a nickname, but we’d always loved taking apart each other’s names and seeing how else we could arrange the letters into love."

I'm honestly still shocked this happened. I absolutely loved Elizabeth Acevedo's YA books, and I confess that I added Family Lore without even reading the blurb first. I hadn't realized it was her adult fiction debut, and I hadn't realized it was going to be a family saga with a magical realism vibe... Because I probably wouldn't be in such a hurry to read it otherwise. This type of family sagas doesn't usually work all that well for me, although there have been exceptions in the past... But sadly Family Lore wasn't one of them. I have to stress here that this is by no means a badly written book; it's simply a case of me not being a good fit for this story. Add the fact that my fickle reading mood has been acting up again, and this type of slower and more character-driven stories just don't work for me at the moment, and it's definitely a 'it's not you, it's me' problem. Family Lore is 100% a magical realism family saga a la Gabriel García Márquez, and if you enjoy this kind of stories you will most likely enjoy Family Lore as well. There is a huge cast of characters involved and a multiple POV structure to consider where we learn more about the lives of most of them. Make sure to brace yourself for a LOT of drama and issues! For me personally they overshadowed the truly interesting (and magical realism) part of the plot, but then again I'm never a fan of family drama in the first place. Like I said before, I simply wasn't a good match for Family Lore! That will teach me to read the blurb first even if I've loved the author's work in the past...

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now_booking's review

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emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.0

This is an autobuy author for me. I’m not a huge fan of YA fiction but in Elizabeth Acevedo’s hands, I’m typically sold. So when I heard she had released her first adult novel, I rushed to get it. And I’m not disappointed.

This is a multigenerational or maybe inter generational family history of the Marte family over 3 generations…. Set around middle Marte sister and dreamer of death’s, Flor’s, sudden desire to have a living wake, this is a story of mothers and daughters, sisters and aunties and the complex and essential nature of those relationships across a life span.

I overall liked this- it’s very much in the mysticism / literary fiction lane, whether with Flor’s ability to predict deaths in her dreams, or Pastora’s ear for discerning the truth, or Camilla’s ability to heal with herbs, or Matilde’s gift of embodying music, or whether it’s having evil aunt’s possessed or a daughter (Ona) with her pride in her “alpha” genitalia, this recollection of the Marte women’s history and collective experience across generations reads almost as a memoir and provides proud insights into Dominican culture and heritage.

I’m typically not a fan of novels where the timelines jump about but here Ona, the main narrator, an anthropologist documenting her family history, manages to make this not so jarring and few seem less. The Martes feel real- perhaps because this is not a memoir of one person but rather of the women in the family, the stories stop and start naturally. These are not women with “and then…” stories that build to some unattainable finale. These are snippets of memory and anecdotes like we all have, like we’re familiar with from grandmothers, mothers and aunts. They’re pockets of stories that help you understand the characters and guess how they came to be in their current state, but they feel like memories and character development rather than full on plot. That’s not to say that this book has no plot, it’s clearly a story of how a family faces their mortality and their heritage at an inflection point of the potential impending death of a matriarch.

For me, this ultimately felt like a story about love- the difficulty and misunderstandings and errors in demonstrating love between mothers and daughters but also around romantic love and heartbreak and the hope of healing. I overall enjoyed this. I perhaps wish there had been a bit more story about characters I cared about like Yadi and Ant… or perhaps Ona and Jeremiah. Perhaps I wished for a bit more comfort of the pastoral bits of happiness. I think I understand what the author wanted to do with this book but at the same time felt that by spreading the storytelling net so wide and not getting very deep, the book did not resonate as much. The writing was of course solid, the scenarios super relatable or otherwise empathy-provoking. You can’t read this without feeling something. And yet, it didn’t feel complete or as whole… perhaps the characters felt a little shortchanged… but perhaps that’s also intentional by the author…you never know anything about anyone and perhaps by approaching this book in this way, we are left with the same gaps in knowledge and questions and curiousities that exist in our own family lore.

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fkshg8465's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

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

4.0

This book was full of pain, love, self-discovery, and sisterhood. All great ingredients for a good story. Rounding up to a four. I was satisfied with the ending, surprised by some of the middle, and enjoyed the novelty of the beginning.

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atamano's review

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emotional hopeful 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

4.0

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magsapt's review

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emotional inspiring reflective sad 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

Family Lore is the story of how three generations of women survived, adapting to circumstances, to misogyny and, most importantly, to each other. It is a book about trauma, life and, above all, death - how to prepare for it, how to accept it and how to just let go.
Sometimes you do not realise how good a book is until you discuss it with someone and a few days have passed. Family Lore is one of Acevedo's best books, although it was not always my favourite as I read it. And this, I must confess, has nothing to do with the author's inability to tell a story or write beautiful prose (a style we're not used to seeing Acevedo use), but with my own biases. My only problem with this book was

Ona's power, and that says more about me than the author. It made me realise how embarrassed I still feel when it comes to talking about female sexuality and how, even though I'm a woman, I still have a lot of work to do to get comfortable with the topic. Do I think Ona's power was best suited to this story? Not really. But should it have made me uncomfortable? I don't think so. And why should it, if it's just a woman talking about her connection to her body? Ona is confident about her sexuality and writes about it openly, without taboos or shame. That's one of the lessons I think we should take from this story, an example to follow rather than perpetuate the shame around it.

What I really liked, though, was the multiple POVs, which worked wonders for me. I think Acevedo knew how to give each character a distinct voice. The author is a master at exploring relationships. This was undoubtedly the best part of the book. We got to know each woman's feelings for the other and how their dynamic changed over time as they married and had children.
However, even though this is a book about women, for women, I would've liked to see more

of brother Samuel, even if only to see how he relates to his wife and daughters. We see that after he got married he stopped being close to his siblings (which is unfortunate), but I don't think his POV would have damaged the story. On the contrary, I think it would have enriched it because his daughters have powers and his wife didn't like that. Samuel's daughters grew up without support, estranged from their father's family, and away from strong and independent women, and I would have loved to see Acevedo's perspective on that.

Something the author excelled at was her description of emotional abuse and how people can actually change.

Mamá Sílvia was the most complex character in this story and her arc was brilliant. Nothing in the world is enough to forgive her for the abuse she inflicted on Pastora, but I would like to think that she learned something from it and tried to make amends through Yadi.

It was beautiful to see.
Overall, I give this book a perfect 4-star rating. It has some things that could've definitely been better, but the story, the plot and the creativity (characteristic of Acevedo) will warm your heart.

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