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celibratingbooks 's review for:

La casa de los espíritus by Isabel Allende
5.0

I grew up in a house filled with books and dreamed of reading in Spanish just like my mom. And though that is certainly a skill I possess, I’d never read a full novel in Spanish before and I couldn’t have picked a better book to start with.

Allende’s prose and use of magical realism were stellar. But more than that, it was how much I saw so many moments of my family and many other Latine families I know - from the spiritualism and machismo and the political ideologies, the violence against women, the passionate love, the mistakes that are repeated generation after generation. I rooted for this family so hard, and especially for the women.