A review by danaaliyalevinson
The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad 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? It's complicated

4.5

I’m Jewish and have Sephardi ancestors who fled Portugal thanks to the Inquisition. So immediately this book was right up my alley. I felt that the prose had a certain ineffable Jewishness to it. There was a poeticism and this feeling of the weight of history, and worlds being destroyed and created, that seeped through every line.
The magic system. The way language and connection to heritage was used to control the world around Luzia was so beautiful.


I also found the characters incredibly compelling. And the chemistry between Luzia and Santángel was beautiful and also poetic. I felt the book in its entirety did a very good job of balancing really wonderful character development with more plot driven storytelling.

My only criticism is that it felt
that Luzia’s connection to her Jewishness was a dangling character thread that was never fully resolved. I kept expecting her to eventually come to identify with her Jewishness in the way that her Aunt Hualit did. Or at the very least, when she transported herself and Santángel toward the end, that she would transport them to Salonika, or even Ottoman Israel-Palestine, to live among Jews. There was some implication of this with the oranges, but it wasn’t explicit.
If that character thread had been better wrapped up, this would’ve been a 5 star read for me. But it was still wonderful.
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