A review by thebakerbookworm
The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina by Zoraida Córdova

adventurous emotional mysterious tense 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

I love a good family drama, and this book had all those elements plus magic so I definitely enjoyed it! It was also really good on audio, though I will say there are a lot of characters and I did get them confused sometimes. I would have loved a family tree, but not sure if the print book has one—does anyone know?

So as I said, there are a lot of characters, but I would say Marimar is the main character and she gets the most development and attention. I liked that we got different perspectives throughout though, from different family members. They all get some nice development and complexity, though I would've liked to learn a bit more about some of the other family members (there were just so many, some of them I still didn't know by the end).

We also have a dual timeline, with the present-day events unfolding as we slowly learn about Orquídea's past. I will say that probably for the first half of the book, the past timeline is much more interesting than the present. The present gets interesting but it takes a while to get there. Events do get crazy and the magic in this story is really intriguing, though there's not a lot of world building; you just have to accept the magic for what it is.

Anyways, I really enjoyed this one and would definitely recommend if you like magical realism mixed with a family drama spread across generations.

Thanks to Libro.fm, Simon and Schuster Audio, and the author for my ALC!
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