A review by kari_f
Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo

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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