Beautiful portrait of family, tradition, and womanhood with all of the poeticism expected of Acevedo

This book follows the four Marte sisters: Matilde, the oldest, is said to have no magic, but she can dance like no one else, a passion she leans on in the face of her husband's infidelity. Flor has dreams of impending deaths — and now she has decided to throw herself a living wake, much to her family’s concern and confusion. Pastora, whose magic allows her to know the truth in what she hears, wants nothing more than to protect her family; and Camilla, whose proficiency with herbs and tinctures is unrivaled, is tired of being overlooked. Also interwoven are the stories of Flor’s daughter Ona, who is doing some family anthropology while struggling with her own desire to start a family; and Yadi, whose comfortable life is upturned by her childhood love's release from prison. In the complex internal thoughts and memories of these six women, Family Lore tells the story of preparations for Flor’s wake and the challenges, questions, and feelings that come along.

My Thoughts: Family Lore is a work of art. It is lyrical and magical, at times both quiet and exuberant, and full of love, hope, fear, grief, and all sorts of challenging emotions woven into a truly beautiful story. The four Marte sisters and their two daughters have such distinct stories and voices that each chapter feels like a story of its own, yet they are interconnected so beautifully to create a complex and wonderful narrative of mothers and daughters, sisters and aunts and nieces, and the ways women love and care for one another across distance, time, and other, more internal barriers. Their magic, both individual and collective, fills this story in more ways than one, and their memories of growing up in the Dominican Republic give further insight to the bonds these women have forged. I know I’ll be thinking about this one for a long time.

Content Warnings: Grief, death, sexual content, sexual assault

Spanning across 3 days you have various viewpoints from the Marte women, 4 sisters and 2 nieces, almost all have gifts. Flor can predict when someone will die so you can imagine the distress and drama caused when she decides to host her own living wake.

This is a Dominican version of Hello Beautiful with some added magical realism to get you in the mood for spooky season. Only I Loved HB but only liked this.

I almost DNF but powered through and started to enjoy it a bit around halfway. The nonlinear timeline threw me off as well as the interrupting narrator and it took awhile for me to get into it.

I enjoyed the intense culture and family bonds, witty banter and likeable characters. I did not enjoy the abundance of references to bodily fluids, the non-linear timeline and the abrupt ending.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ecco for this ARC in exchange for my honest review .

Family Lore is the story of love, magic, and womanhood. We are told a story of the family through Ona who is cataloging the life her mother and aunts have lived. This book was classic Acevedo! A story that pulls on the strings of the heart. Throughout all of her writing I end up feeling as if the characters become apart of my life and her first adult novel is no exception. Each character was so unique while also masterfully tied to resemble the rest in the family. I look forward to seeing the talent that comes in future books released.

I've loved all of Elizabeth Acevedo's YA books, so I had massively high expectations for her adult debut. This book lived up to those expectations and then some--it was a stunning family saga, with such richly developed characters and emotional depths. Most highly recommended.

An interesting look at a loving immigration family with a dash of magical realism. Family Lore is sprawling compared to Acevedo's YA works and, as such, the pacing is slower.

I wanted to like this book more but it just did not work for me. Not sure if I just wasn’t in the mood for it or if I genuinely did not care for it. I will try to reread it and hopefully my opinion will change on it because I have loved this author’s other books.

Thanks to Netgalley and Ecco for the ARC of this!

This was an interesting, family-centric story about life and death, love and sisterhood, and a little bit of magic. I found myself wishing that more of the family’s gifts would be included, because I found the magic fascinating. The idea of planning a living wake was a new one to me and it made for a very unusual story.

I immediately ordered this title to carry in store, but jsut because of the compelling plot and fascinating characters, but becuase it’s felt so familiar. It was like being around my own very dysfunctional Dominican family and still learning that we are all damaged individuals afraid of the same things.

Was a little nervous about this because I love her YA work, but this was just as good. She knows how to tell a story about families.

Y’all I really tried with this. I gave it until 50% hoping that at some point it would make sense. But I could not for the life of me tell who was talking, what they were talking about, who was in what time period, and any of the inset portions. There was a really great part about the juvenile justice system that I liked, but it felt like it came from a different book. I also felt that the random sex scenes were inserted just to delineate this from her normal high-quality YA work. I don’t know if I would pick up another one of her adult books.

I really struggled with this book despite absolutely adoring Acevedo's YA works. I agree with many other reviewers that in this novel, her lyrical style lent itself to more confusion than clarity. I'm not opposed to having a big cast of characters and usually love a family drama; something about this just couldn't come all the way together for me.

I've read and loved two of Acevedo's YA novels, so my expectations were high for Family Lore. I enjoyed the cultural aspects of the book and the stories of the different family members. At times it was a bit too many things to keep track of between six narrators and almost every chapter having storylines in both the present and the past.

Acevedo is an incredible writer with such beautiful language and she’s able to bring the characters off the page so well. This story was unique and I enjoyed the characters greatly. The Marte women have gifts and Flor’s gift is the ability to know when people will die. She’s chosen to have a living wake, which sets off a chain of events that each member of the family must come to terms with. The story takes place over the course of three days leading up to Flor’s wake and the title really says it all: it focuses on family lore, the family’s history and stories.

As I said before, Acevedo is a stunning writer. Her work is incredible and you can feel the characters. I enjoyed seeing the family life and events through various characters perspectives. I was left in some places wanting more from the story, but this is a great piece of work by Acevedo and I do recommend giving it a read!

Family Lore is Elizabeth Acevedo's first adult novel after several successful middle grade novels. Following matriarchal characters and their female offspring in the Marte family, Family Lore looks at the past and present lives of these women. With a bit of magical realism, Acevedo's familiar storytelling is present without her usual prose writing. Although all elements didn't necessary work for me, I enjoyed the story Acevedo presented as a whole. The magical elements presented weren't overpowering in the storytelling, but were more of an extension of the characters themselves, which I pleased by. In the opening letter to the readers, Acevedo wrote that she drew from her own family in writing this novel and it shows with the care she took in writing all the women. I did miss the prose writing that was present in a couple of her previous books, but other elements, such as the description of food and the Dominican-American experience, are still present and thriving in Family Lore.

If you're a fan of Acevedo's work definitely grab the book. If you're also looking for a story that is full of strong women this book will also a good addition to your TBR.

Thank you to Atria Books and Netgalley for a copy in exchange for review consideration.

This is a character driven story. I almost DNF'd it, but I was curious how it was going to end. This is one of those books that I can see is good and lyrical, but not necessarily for me. I need a little more plot than this story offered. I have really liked this author's YA books, but this one was very slow for me and hard to get through. You have to like character driven stories to like this one, in my opinion. I copied the Goodreads blurb because it was very succinct in it's description. I couldn't describe what happened better. I hate to say it, but this one was not for me. I can see why people would like this though. The characters are interesting and show some growth. The premise is interesting but it didn't really go anywhere. There isn't much plot. But you can feel that the sisters and the whole family really care for one another.

Goodreads blurb - From bestselling, National Book Award-winning author Elizabeth Acevedo comes her first novel for adults, the story of one Dominican-American family told through the voices of its women as they await a gathering that will forever change their lives.

Flor has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. So when she decides she wants a living wake--a party to bring her family and community together to celebrate the long life she's led--her sisters are surprised. Has Flor forseen her own death, or someone else's? Does she have other motives? She refuses to tell her sisters, Matilde, Pastora, and Camila.

But Flor isn't the only person with secrets. Matilde has tried for decades to cover the extent of her husband's infidelity, but she must now confront the true state of her marriage. Pastora is typically the most reserved sister, but Flor's wake motivates this driven woman to solve her sibling's problems. Camila is the youngest sibling, and often the forgotten one, but she's decided she no longer wants to be taken for granted.

And the next generation, cousins Ona and Yadi, face tumult of their own: Yadi is reuniting with her first love, who was imprisoned when they were both still kids; Ona is married for years and attempting to conceive. Ona must decide whether it's worth it to keep trying--to have a child, and the anthropology research that's begun to feel lackluster.

Spanning the three days prior to the wake, Family Lore traces the lives of each of the Marte women, weaving together past and present, Santo Domingo and New York City. Told with Elizabeth Acevedo's inimitable and incandescent voice, this is an indelible portrait of sisters and cousins, aunts and nieces--one family's journey through their history, helping them better navigate all that is to come.

Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo is a wonderful story about family. The history of four sisters’ lives with magic added. One of the sisters, Flor, decides to have a living wake for herself after watching a documentary. Her sisters, daughter and loved ones are expecting the worst, who has a wake unless they are dying? Ona, Flors daughter decides to write about her family and the book is different moments in each of the sisters lives along with their children’s and husbands. This book was beautiful and I loved reading about this family seeing their Dominican culture come to life on page. I being Latina saw myself in these people and saw my mom and aunts in these women. It reminded that’s it’s important to know our family lore and to celebrate it. I loved how Elizabeth Acevedo included touches of magic within this family that furthered their story and their experiences. I knew how talented Elizabeth Acevedo was having read her YA books but this adult debut spoke to me so deeply. I love what she is doing for the Latine community. I gave this book 4.5⭐️ stars and I definitely urge everyone to pick it up and hopefully once you’ve read it are inspired to explore your family lore.

I enjoyed Family Lore, but not as much as Clap When you Land, which I thought was really beautiful. Family Lore is certainly more adult, focusing on a family of women, across two generations, sisters and their daughters, who immigrated from the Dominican Republic to New York. The women all have different magical powers, but they're subtle, and Flor can foresee deaths, and clearly sees her own death and decides to plan a wake for herself while she's still alive. The story alternates between perspectives, time periods and countries. It's not one of those stories that wraps up neatly, instead you feel like the stories will continue with future generations.

Elizabeth Acevedo has entered the land of adult fiction, and I hope that she stays for awhile. I always have enjoyed her narrative voice in her books geared towards a YA audience, especially her novel in verse, “Poet X”. She did not disappoint in her latest novel “Family Lore” in which she shares the multigenerational stories of Dominican-American sisters and their families as collected by Ona, the daughter of Flor and the niece of Matilde, Pastora, Camila. The audience learns that each woman in this family has a unique gift ranging from dreaming about future deaths to lighting up the dance floor. After watching documentary about a living funeral, Flor decides that she wants to do the same as to celebrate her life while still living. This sets the stage for the audience to learn family’s stories that are full of romance, hardship, perseverance, and love, always love.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and the alternating perspectives. One detractor was Ona’s occasional interjections in a chapter, especially early on because it was difficult to identify the voice and its purpose. Otherwise, each character has such depth. I think that most readers will have a favorite family member. Mine was Matilde, so kind.

As a high school English teacher, I would recommend the book to Advanced Placement: English Literature students due to the mature sexual content.

I would like to thank Elizabeth Acevedo, Ecco, and NetGalley for the ARC.

The lives of four sisters in a Dominican-American family and two cousins offsprings of the sisters play out in this first adult novel by Elizabeth Acevedo. Flor, one of the fours sisters wants to bring the family and friends together to celebrate her long life - so what better way to do that than to throw a living wake for herself? The novel takes place over three days before the wake, as well as takes a step back in time to let readers into the intimate details of all their lives. There wasn’t much of a plot or character development - it was more about learning about the different players and their lives and relationships. The book didn’t keep me super engaged, unlike the author’s three other books, which I absolutely enjoyed (two five stars and one four-star). Overall, this was a bit of a disappointment as I was looking forward to her latest book. Family Lore was just an okay read for me. Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.