Reviews with content warning for Toxic relationship - Family Lore

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Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo

24 reviews

_weirdreads13's review

emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective slow-paced

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

2.0

I am so disappointed with this lecture. As a Puertorrican (I'm a fellow Caribbean, I have an attachment to La Kiskeya), I really really wanted to loved this book, to the point that I would love to have it in my shelf. Elizabeth really had a good premise for the book: the story of a family saga and a woman grieving her life and family. I think the lack of depth in the stories of the character's is what made me lack enjoying and connecting with the book. Another thing that I felt was a "killing vibe" of my lecture was the jumping between times (present and past). I think the timeline in the stories will change suddenly and without any given reason or connection. I even wrote down what I felt needed more depth in the story:

The different perspective between the daughters and their mothers: It's obvious that Mamá Silvia, Flor, Pastora, Camila, Ona and Yadira had different relationship with their mothers, according to the time each one were born. Why Mamá Silvia despised her daughters, except Camila? How Flor and Pastora view sex, different from their daughters that were exposed to a different culture?
Silvia's and Susano's past: if this is a family saga, why was not the past of the matriarch and the patriarch included? It was because of them that everything started. And don't think "but then Elizabeth would have to start with Mamá's and Papá's family", no, this is the story of the Marte family, and because of them and how they raised their kids is why the story developed itself.
La Vieja's mount: how did she get mounted? It will be interested to see more in depth this character and the impact she had on Pastora and Flor.
More about Samuel, the brother: what do you mean you are going to give me a family saga and leave out the brother?! "It's a tale of sisters". No, it's a family saga. What was his role in the family history? How he impacted the sisters' life?
Flor and Nazario: developing a "relationship" between them, making something happened would make Flor to have a deep secret. I feel that what happened in the book was superficial.
Camila: she was the youngest of the daughter and she was raised differently from her sisters and, again, it's a family saga and she was not often included in the story nor how was her relationship with Flor, Matilde, Pastora, Samuel, Mamá and Papá. Adding her by the last part of the book was not in the bingo card, which takes me to the next point.
The connection that could develop between Pastora and Camila: they have something in common, they are the youngest of the children and both were harassed by the same pendejo. I would love for their story and relationship to have more depth.
Matilde's marriage: again, superficiality is what killed the depth and connection of the character's and their story.
Flor's character: the main character, the next matriarch, the person who the story goes around the story of her marriage? Which is the "continuation" of the Marte family? And the struggles the marriage went through? Flor's feelings toward her marriage and life in general?
Ona's infertility: the daughter's story was like reading a teenager's story: confusing, suddenly changing, emotionally and irrational with their love story. What Ona really wanted? How it affected her? How it affected her relationship?
The nun: another character who is from the family and you are not going to tell me the impact of the character on the Marte family?
Yadira's role in the book: the most misunderstood character. I didn't understood her role nor the reason of her perspective in the book.
Flor's role in her family: for me, Flor was the most special of the family (obvio), but I wish to see more of her role in the family.
Flor's grief: by the end of the book we can understand that Flor knew she was dying. It will be so cool an amazing to see more of the process of Flor grieving her life while she reminiscence of the past. This would have give the story a huge different perspective on every story of the Marte family (which remind me of Erik Erikson's theory: despair vs integrity, the last "stage" of a person's life. I'm not saying that the book should be an analysis of Flor's life, but I believe I put this here because I've been studying for my test, LOL!)

As a person who is fascinated by people and their story (if you couldn't noticed by me involving psychology theories, LOL), I really really wanted to love this book. I will give the benefit of the doubt to Elizabeth, because it was her first adult novel. I will read from her too Clap When You Land which is kind of too another "family saga" and see if there is difference between the two genres and how she writes them.

In conclusion: this book had so much potential but it felt superficial.

Content Warnings

yvo_about_books's review against another edition

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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...

Content Warnings

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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celery's review

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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?

Content Warnings

clairelisebella's review

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dark emotional sad slow-paced

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

2.0

I can’t put my finger on why this book didn’t work for me. It had a lot of good things going for it — I love magical realism, multi-gen family sagas, and a dark/macabre tone. But it just didn’t land. The pacing was off, the format with the sporadic transcripts and asides from Ona were unbalanced, and the intermixed Spanish felt distracting instead of immersive. I inched through it and I’m glad I finished it, but I didn’t have anything pushing me forward.

Content Warnings

moon_peach's review

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emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

This story uses multiple perspectives through different characters. All the Marte women have suffered some trauma in different forms.
Something to note is we aren't necessarily given a resolution to any of their trauma, however it (mostly) ends hopeful for most of them if not bittersweet.

Content Warnings