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Family Lore: A Good Morning America Book Club Pick by Elizabeth Acevedo

68 reviews

cadence99's review against another edition

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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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mandi_lea's review against another edition

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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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ukponge's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.0

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spongebobbiii's review against another edition

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medium-paced

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

2.0

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enlamont's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

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

4.0

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aqtbenz's review against another edition

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More literary than I'm in the mood for right now

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kari_f's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny hopeful reflective slow-paced

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

4.0

Elizabeth Acevedo is an author whose works I’ll automatically buy, without needing a synopsis or summary. Whether it’s poetry or prose, she has a way of infusing vibrant beauty and overflowing emotion into her writing. This, her adult debut, is a multi-generational tale that infuses a bit of magic, a lot of culture, and plenty of family drama.

I will say that if you’re going into this book expecting it to be similar to her previous works, your experience won’t be what you anticipate. While many of the themes common to Acevedo’s works can be found here as well, this book is much more adult in nature, and it comes with many issues that you wouldn’t see in a YA novel.

The story is also told through a nonlinear format, through the eyes of the six Marte women. Each character has a strong enough voice that I rarely had to check back to the chapter heading to see whose head we were in at the moment. I absolutely love that the reader has each woman’s perspective through the novel, especially when it comes to how they viewed each other. While I wish we’d had a bit more closure on some of the characters, I understand that this was merely a snapshot of their layered and nuanced lives. I like knowing that each of the women had more than what was presented in this particular story, and that for most of them, this three-day-time period was the start of something new and life changing.

The pacing is slow, giving us time to really dive deep and get to know each character in relation to the others. I adore character-driven stories, where we get to know each one well enough to connect and understand their motivations. The women in this book are flawed in what feels like a realistic way, and apart from the “gifts” many of them possess, they seem like women we might know and love in our own lives.

Thank you so much to Elizabeth Acevedo, Ecco, and Netgalley for this advanced copy!

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thewoodlandbookshelf's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

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

4.25

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thecriticalreader's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful 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

3.75

Review:

I enjoyed my experience reading Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo; I found the characters and their family story to be interesting and the writing to be beautiful and powerful. Acevedo unapologetically uplifts the lives and experiences of her six main characters, portraying them as flawed but ultimately sympathetic people who live ordinary live despite their supernatural abilities.

Despite my overall positive reception of Family Lore, I imagine that it will not be everyone’s cup of tea. For one, it goes into descriptive detail of multiple bodily functions/fluids, which will undoubtedly turn many readers off. For another, it uses a lot of sentences, phrases, and words in Spanish, so people who cannot read Spanish may find themselves annoyed at frequently having to guess at the meaning or look up the phrases.

The book also uses a rather unconventional storytelling form; the different points-of-view are supposedly compiled by one character, Ona, an anthropology professor who wishes to capture her family’s lore in a book. However, it is easy to forget this, as many of the chapters feel like traditional third-person narratives told from the perspectives of the different women. On top of the switching of perspectives between six characters, the book tells the fifty or more years of family history in a non-chronological fashion. My guess is that the author does this to mimic the way family lore is passed down; that is, in piecemeal fashion from various viewpoints rather than as a singular, cohesive, narrative. The drawback to Acevedo’s approach is that it takes considerable focus on the reader’s part to keep track of a story with an already ambitious scope, which will probably frustrate some readers. While I was able to (more or less) follow the characters and the narrative, I think I did lose a bit of enjoyment and understanding from this format. I also found the anthropological aspect a little annoying, because it was never clear which parts of the story were truly from a person’s perspective and which were interpreted or fabricated by Ona to complete her book. I would have preferred a more traditional third-person narrative without Ona’s interjections, or a book that leans more heavily into the anthropological angle.

I enjoyed Family Lore and think it has a lot going for it in terms of the power of its narrative, characters, and writing. That being said, I think this book will not be for everyone due to some of the choices Acevedo makes for her storytelling.

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cassielaj's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful inspiring 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

5.0

Family Lore is a work of art. It is lyrical, magical, quiet and exuberant, full of love and hope and fear and all sorts of challenging emotions woven into a truly beautiful story.
The four Marte sisters and their two daughters have such distinct stories and voices that each chapter feels like a story of its own, yet they are interconnected so beautifully to create a complex and wonderful narrative of mothers and daughters, sisters and aunts and nieces, and the ways women love and care for one another across distance, time, and other, more internal barriers. Their magic, both individual and collective, fills this story in more ways than one. I know I’ll be thinking about this one for a long time and going back to reference the many quotes I highlighted when I just need to read something incredible.

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