Review by probablyjenna - Real Americans

3.0

Okay, this book really wasn’t for me and I am I am going to attempt to explain why in a fair, cohesive way.

I felt like the characters were extremely underdeveloped, and a book that is meant to be a multigenerational family story needs fully developed characters. I would be hard pressed to describe any of the main characters beyond a few superficial observations. I felt as if I was kept an arms length away from them, as if they were hiding something from me.
This is told in three parts, in three different perspectives, and each part felt like a different genre…which COULD be cool, but these just felt disjointed. It felt as if the author didn’t want to fully commit to anything, resulting in the book feeling all over the place. I also didn’t like that each POV section ended right as something big happened - that ties back into character development. We never see the development because the section ends right when it might happen.
There is a really misplaced, underdeveloped aspect of magical realism that really took me out of the story.
Lots of telling. Very little showing, very little feeling. Some lovely sentences & observations! But ultimately, I just felt bored and uninvested.

So yeah, this one was just not a good match for me. That’s not to say it’s a bad book, just not one that worked for me.