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A review by rowancdewit
Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo
emotional
mysterious
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
I would like it to be known that after the first 100 pages, I started only reading the first line of every other paragraph, and I still understood everything that happened in the story.
I’m pretty bummed, because the things that I did enjoy about this book, I really liked! But the things that I didn’t enjoy about the book ruined and tainted my experience with the book as a whole.
I wish more than ANYTHING that Acevedo would have focused on the four sisters. Or just a book written on Flor’s perspective, or just a book written on the three sister’s perspective of Flor in their life and leading to the wake. Every single time the narrative switched to Yadi or Ona, it took everything in me not to skip chapters entirely. They’re thirty year old women that speak like twelve year olds, extremely unrealistic and unnatural and just, super teenager-esque.
Oh goodness, Yadi and Ona’s chapters are so graphic! Granted, I am more conservative on my tolerance for sexual references in books, but this book? I’m sorry, it is so disgustingly graphic for absolutely no purpose. Gross, nasty, perverse graphic scenes that just gave me the ick. And pages and pages of it. If this book had been focused on only Yadi and Ona’s stories, I really wouldn’t have finished this book.
If anyone’s familiar, this book just had major Rupi Kaur vibes. Overexercised metaphors and details and exaggerations that make this book sound so out of touch. Granted, there were some good quotes in this book, but I think it’s one of those “even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then” moments. Choppy writing, chapters that just felt like they had no purpose. I’d find myself mid-paragraph saying “what is the point of this?” Really, the writing felt like the author wanted the book to feel so real and so relatable, but it was really just unnatural and hard to read.
Oh! And then the Spanish! I do not mind the interweaving of Spanish and English, I really feel like it adds character to the bilingual characters. But! To drop it in all the time, full sentences, and no context clues to understand what they’re saying. I’m confused if the author just wanted me to have Google translate up the entire time (because we all know how reliable of a translation that gives?) I’m really good at picking up context clues in books, but there were many times that a Spanish line was written out, and after a few minutes, I’d just keep reading and hope it wasn’t important, which seems like the opposite of what the author would hope to achieve by adding in Spanish elements?
Again, I wish we could have a version of this book that just focused on the narrative of the sisters, because even that would have done wonders for this story. Family Lore really felt like a child trying their absolute hardest to write a mature, adult book and prove that no one would know a child wrote it. Overused metaphors, simple words switched out for bigger more complex words JUST for the sake of it, a story structure so insanely hard to follow, and language so foul it would ONLY make a twelve year old giggle. If anyone mentioned to me that they were going to read this book, I would 100% steer them away.
I’m pretty bummed, because the things that I did enjoy about this book, I really liked! But the things that I didn’t enjoy about the book ruined and tainted my experience with the book as a whole.
I wish more than ANYTHING that Acevedo would have focused on the four sisters. Or just a book written on Flor’s perspective, or just a book written on the three sister’s perspective of Flor in their life and leading to the wake. Every single time the narrative switched to Yadi or Ona, it took everything in me not to skip chapters entirely. They’re thirty year old women that speak like twelve year olds, extremely unrealistic and unnatural and just, super teenager-esque.
Oh goodness, Yadi and Ona’s chapters are so graphic! Granted, I am more conservative on my tolerance for sexual references in books, but this book? I’m sorry, it is so disgustingly graphic for absolutely no purpose. Gross, nasty, perverse graphic scenes that just gave me the ick. And pages and pages of it. If this book had been focused on only Yadi and Ona’s stories, I really wouldn’t have finished this book.
If anyone’s familiar, this book just had major Rupi Kaur vibes. Overexercised metaphors and details and exaggerations that make this book sound so out of touch. Granted, there were some good quotes in this book, but I think it’s one of those “even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then” moments. Choppy writing, chapters that just felt like they had no purpose. I’d find myself mid-paragraph saying “what is the point of this?” Really, the writing felt like the author wanted the book to feel so real and so relatable, but it was really just unnatural and hard to read.
Oh! And then the Spanish! I do not mind the interweaving of Spanish and English, I really feel like it adds character to the bilingual characters. But! To drop it in all the time, full sentences, and no context clues to understand what they’re saying. I’m confused if the author just wanted me to have Google translate up the entire time (because we all know how reliable of a translation that gives?) I’m really good at picking up context clues in books, but there were many times that a Spanish line was written out, and after a few minutes, I’d just keep reading and hope it wasn’t important, which seems like the opposite of what the author would hope to achieve by adding in Spanish elements?
Again, I wish we could have a version of this book that just focused on the narrative of the sisters, because even that would have done wonders for this story. Family Lore really felt like a child trying their absolute hardest to write a mature, adult book and prove that no one would know a child wrote it. Overused metaphors, simple words switched out for bigger more complex words JUST for the sake of it, a story structure so insanely hard to follow, and language so foul it would ONLY make a twelve year old giggle. If anyone mentioned to me that they were going to read this book, I would 100% steer them away.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Infertility and Sexual content
Moderate: Sexual assault