I am finally calling it. I am very sad to say that this book will be a DNF for me at 41%. I tried it five different times across several months and I just could never get into the story. It's not just that there are a lot of characters, it's also that their voice isn't different enough to keep the story interesting. It's also that I couldn't get myself to care about any of the characters and that's tough for a character-driven story. I love and adore Acevedo and I will still read anything she writes no matter what. I am sure I will be in the minority on this one so if you've loved Acevedo and her work as much as I have I still recommend you give this a try because it's full of her beautiful, poetic writing.

with gratitude to netgalley and Ecco for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Flor Marte can predict the exact day when a person will die, so when she arranges a “living wake” for herself, her family assumes the worst. Over three days Flor, her three sisters, and two younger cousins will all delve into the stories of their family. As the timeline goes from the rich past of this complex family to the present, different recollections of the events are revealed from each person’s perspective.

Some of the great things about this book are that it’s a multigenerational tale, it’s rich in Latin American history, explores the bonds of female familial relationships , and has an element of magic. Also, just to be completely honest, Elizabeth Acevedo has an undeniable way with prose! That said, I sadly didn’t get drawn into this book as much as I have her others. I found it to be a very slow build, and while I felt a degree of emotional connection in some areas, I just didn’t feel fully engaged with this book.

Family Lore will be released 8/1/23.

*I received a copy of Family Lore from the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

I think of Elizabeth Acevedo as one of the most impressive Young Adult authors, so it is an absolute delight to see her bat her first adult novel out of the park. As I was reminded while listening to the podcast First Edition, Acevedo started her career as a poet –earning the titles of National Slam Champion early in her career and Young People’s Poet Laureate in 2022 – and her background in poetry translates to her vivid prose.

Family Lore is an intergenerational family saga about four Dominican-American sisters and their daughters who have built lives for themselves in New York. Like so many classic Latin American authors, Acevedo has infused her novel with magical realism, giving each woman in the Marte family a unique mystic power. Flor, the eldest of the Marte women, has always been able to predict the day a person will die, so when Flor decides to throw a “living wake” for herself, she sends her family into a tailspin.

Through slices of the Marte women’s past and present lives, Acevedo highlights varying experiences of womanhood, touching on joys and challenges that include desire, friendship, love, infertility, infidelity, career and most of all family. Impressively, Acevedo managed to juggle six different narrators and life experiences without letting any of them drop (though you might find yourself wishing you could spend more time with your favorite character). The way the Marte women show up for each other in Family Lore is incredibly moving, given that their relationships are characterized by real and relatable complications.

I also would like to note that I think Acevedo does a marvelous job of integrating Spanish into her novel – no italics or quotation marks needed.

Ultimately, I love a character-driven narrative about strong women, I love a good novel written by a poet, and I love magical realism, so reading Family Lore was an absolute delight for me. Thank you to Ecco and NetGalley for the Advanced Readers Copy. Family Lore is out August 1st!

Thank you Ecco and Net Galley for providing me with a novel that seems to be on every “most anticipated” list and that was just long-listed for The Center for Fiction 2023 First Novel Prize. This is the first adult novel from Y/A superstar Elizabeth Acevedo who has has won a number of coveted prizes, including a National Book Award, and it does not disappoint. It follows the quartet of post-menopausal, Marte sisters (aging, waning sexuality, and missed opportunities are themes in the book) and two of their daughters (men play a minor role, serving as nothing more than disappointments or fodder for the female gaze) over a span of a few days as Flor, the second eldest girl who can sense loss of life, plans her living wake. Flor had not anticipated that that the lead-up to the wake would become so intense. “The conversations with her siblings and daughter felt fraught with questions of life and death.”

Flor’s daughter, Ona, whose “Marte Family Talent” is a “pussy [that] was a full-sensory supernatural experience for folks” is, despite three degrees and a teaching position at City College, certain that her mother has predicted her own demise. Matilde, at 71 the eldest and sweetest of the sisters, who had suffered multiple miscarriages and an unfaithful lounge singer husband, was also concerned because Flor had an “uncanny knowing” - she’d never been wrong about someone dying. Matilde assuages her concerns by lusting after the 40-ish baseball player with a “hella Dominican ass” who sends her flirtatious texts. Pastora, the stoutest of the sisters who delighted in events that “encouraged seconds and thirds,” lacks a supernatural talent. She suffered an abusive childhood having been informally adopted by a mentally disabled aunt, but she was the only sister who married a good man (Manuelito, however, is conveniently absent from the female-centric book having to return to the DR to tend to his dying mother). Pastora’s daughter, Yadi, owns a vegan cafeteria, and has learned that Ant, her boyfriend when she was a teen, has returned to the block a decade and a half after being incarcerated. Yadi was too distracted by Ant’s return to worry about Tia Flor. “She’d always been a bit strange, a bit lost.” Rounding out the quartet is the youngest sister, Camila, who had been born after her sisters and the eldest sibling, Samuel, had moved away, and enjoys the best apartment of all of the sisters and the only one who paid property taxes.

Although set over a few weeks prior to Flor’s living wake, the novel is told through memories that bridge the past and the present and locations from the Dominican countryside to Santo Domingo to New York City. The Matilde women are unforgettable characters, and Acevedo, a poet, deftly uses lush imagery, colorful descriptions and believable dialogue to create an indelible portrait of the journey of these sisters and cousins, aunts and nieces. This novel will undoubtedly resonate with first generation Americans with Latinx roots, but Acevedo’s universal themes of aging, grieving, tending to family, and honoring traditions, will resonate with all readers.

4.5 I’m extremely surprised reading the reviews that others had a hard time getting into this one. I knew from the first few pages that I would love this. We follow Flor, the eldest sister in the family who has decided she wants to have a living wake to celebrate her life, and her sisters, daughter, and niece. All of the women in this family are touched with a little bit of magic in their own way. For example, Flor has dreams of deaths that will occur. Obviously her family goes into panic mode when she announces her living wake.

The prose is seriously beautiful, and the characters all unique and distinct. I especially enjoyed some of the flashback scenes to the sisters’ time in DR as children and young women. Acevedo has proven that she cannot only write exceptional YA fiction, but adult as well.

This reminds me a bit structurally of Urrea’s The House of Broken Angels, which was a favorite of mine last year. I love the multi-POV family saga that leads up to a big event. This was beautifully done and definitely pulled on my heart strings.

I received an eARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Elizabeth Acevedo’s debut adult audience book, Family Lore, takes a look at a close knit family’s colorful characters in free verse. There are many characters to get to know and some untranslated Spanish peppered throughout, so at times I lost the flow of the story.

I prefer her young adult books to this, but I enjoyed reading this, too.

I read Elizabeth Acevedo’s YA novel-in-verse The Poet X in book club a few years back and absolutely loved it. I loved the book even more after I got the chance to watch an author talk that Acevedo did where she read an excerpt from the book out loud (with her being a poet, this was a wonderful treat that definitely enhanced my experience of the book). Given this admiration for Acevedo’s previous work, I was of course excited when I heard she would have a new book out this summer and that it would be her first novel for adults.

Family Lore is a story about a Dominican-American family told from the rotating perspectives of the Marte sisters — Matilde, Flor, Pastora, Camila — and their daughters Ona and Yadi. Written in a non-linear format, the story is centered around the living wake that second eldest sister Flor decides to throw for herself to celebrate the long life that she has lived. While this request may not be particularly unusual, it sets off anxiety and panic within this family because of the special “gift” that Flor possesses: the ability to “see death” — that is, to predict (in some cases, to the exact day) when someone will die (the premonition comes in a dream to her). Whether Flor saw her own death or someone else’s, she refuses to say, which has the family speculating as to the motivation behind the wake. Flor’s sister Pastora also has a “gift” of her own — the ability to “see truth” whereby she can tell just from the way someone talks and the tone of their voice whether they are lying or not. So the family looks to Pastora to hopefully talk to Flor and get some answers— but instead, Pastora chooses to confront oldest sister Matilde about her unfaithful husband Rafa, whose philandering ways Matilde has tolerated for decades. Meanwhile, their next generation, Yadi and Ona, have their own struggles and issues that they are secretly dealing with. In the three days leading up to the wake, some things happen that lead the various characters to reminisce and reflect about their pasts, with a few “secrets” that undoubtedly spill forth in the process. This is the part where the story jumps back and forth not just between time periods (past and present, though without specific timeframe), but also between settings, with scenes taking place in the Dominican Republic as well as in the United States (specifically in New York).

This was an interesting story that I found to be beautifully written with prose that was both poetic and lyrical. With that said however, the format, unfortunately, didn’t quite work for me. First, there were way too many characters, all with their own unique backstories that were told in alternating chapters non-chronologically, which made things hard to follow. As I was reading, I was having a hard time keeping everyone’s story straight, which was frustrating (though it helped that Acevedo included a character table at the front of the book, which I had to refer back to more often than not). The other aspect that I felt didn’t really work were the snippets of commentary from Ona that were inserted throughout the story. Ona’s character, an anthropologist, interviewed various members of her family for a research project she was working on, and excerpts from those interviews were woven into the story — which I didn’t mind, except that I felt those most of those snippets and segments didn’t contribute much to advancing the plot, and given the non-linear nature of the story, it just made things more confusing (for me at least). Thirdly, the story felt too scattered, with multiple threads that seemed to go in different directions, and while the threads did come together at the end, once I got there, I still felt like I didn’t really know what was going on (and it also didn’t help that the ending itself felt too abrupt and ambiguous, which made an already complicated structure even more confusing).

Overall, I felt that this story had potential, it’s just that it was executed in a way that was more complex than it needed to be. I did find several of the sisters’ backstories interesting, especially in seeing how some of the things that happened in their lives shaped who they eventually became — but it felt like too much to explore all at the same time. Perhaps a better approach would’ve been to focus only on one or two main characters’ arcs rather than try to cover everyone’s story all at once. As a whole though, I did appreciate what Acevedo was trying to do and indeed, there was much that I did enjoy about the book, but unfortunately, the tedious and frustrating reading experience won out in the end.

Though Acevedo’s first foray into adult fiction didn’t quite land for me, I continue to be an admirer of her YA works, with The Poet X remaining an unforgettable favorite. I also continue to look forward to any future works she might come out with, be it YA or adult — though hopefully the next adult one will be a better experience.

Received ARC from Ecco via NetGalley.

I am such a huge fan of Elizabeth Acevedo and I was so excited to get to read this ARC! She has this magical way of writing characters as fully three-dimensional and presenting them with all their complications without any judgment. Family Lore was no exception and I fell in love with this family. It was a beautiful reflection on the blood ties that bind, sisterhood, and womanhood as a whole.

This was a very interesting family saga.

Each sister's backstory felt very grounded and personal despite the mystic elements. I actually was a bit disappointed that the mystic "powers" of each Marte sister weren't explored further. But I think that is part of the narrative, because it's meant to be very grounded in reality.

That said, I didn't vibe well with the overall structure. There wasn't much progress made in character growth or overall plot. I couldn't really connect to any of the characters before we were zooming away from them and onto another sister.

The book is super rooted in the experiences of immigrant and first gen women from the Dominican Republic. I loved reading the different perspectives. A lot of conversations switched from Spanish to English, but it didn't feel forced.

Elizabeth Acevedo delves deep into issues like sexuality, faith menopause, fertility, relationships, relationship with one's body, etc... from a female lense. A lot of that felt fresh and uniquely honest.

Thank you to NetGalley, author Elizabeth Acevedo, and Ecco for providing me with a free ARC in exchange for my honest opinion!

I have long been a fan of Acevedo's YA works, so I was so thrilled to see that she was releasing her first adult novel. It did not disappoint at ALL, and I'm already so sad that I have to wait for more from her!! Acevedo's writing is some of the most gorgeous and prolific that I have ever read. She has such a way of writing beautifully complex characters that jump off the page. Her writing is so natural and authentic and conveys so many emotions ranging from humor to longing to uncertainty to joy to love to many more. What she does well is writing about women and the experience of being a woman, and this family drama is filled to the brim with them. My biggest complaint is that there might have been just a tad too many characters, as I didn't get to see certain women as fully as I would have liked (especially Camila). However, reading the both the present and past history of these sisters was so engaging. I loved the magical realism elements of the different sisters' powers, as it added a unique touch to an otherwise pretty typical family drama format. My favorite to read about was Yadi, as being in my 20s, I was able to relate to Yadi and Ona more. The complex relationships that each woman has with a man in her life was so interesting and added more depth to the novel than I was expecting. The only other thing I didn't love was the addition of Ona's background with porn. I thought that storyline was a bit underdeveloped in the sense that it felt a bit out of sorts with the rest of the story. Overall though, Family Lore was a great adult debut from Acevedo that magnified all of her talents that I loved from reading her YA works. I am anxiously awaiting her next book, whether it be adult or YA!!

*4.5*

I haven’t cried because of a book quite awhile. The last pages of had me in tears at one in the morning.

This is a book about family. Four sisters and two daughters with gifts that shape their lives in many ways. The hardships that come with growing up together or apart. It’s also about how your family and environment can impact life decisions and how they can determine how you live.

Flor has a gift that allows her to see a persons life and death in her dreams. When she unexpectedly announces a living wake for herself, her family begins to worry and the book takes places leading up to the wake. The story is told in six POV’s, the main person telling the stories is the daughter of Flor, Ona. Ona writes this story in interviews but also in prose. Each POV is a woman recounting their life as a child up to where they are now. Their whole lives are told in this book.

Where do I even begin with this review? Firstly, the writing is beautiful. That’s an obvious fact when it comes to Elizabeth Acevedo. The characters are so real and relatable. The way she tells each persons stories makes you think they’re real. The incorporation of Dominican heritage is perfect. She showcases the beauty but also the reality of both DR and NY. The language was very natural, as a Spanish speaker is was easy for me to read but I’m not sure how it would be for non-Spanish speakers.

This book is not for everyone. If you were expecting a fantastical story with a little excitement you will be disappointed. This is truly character based and if you don’t like the characters it would be very hard to read.

I personally related completely with the characters because of the bond I share with my own sisters. Seeing how they grow together and apart was very endearing. Seeing the mother/daughter relationships vary so much from person to person as well shows just how much those bonds truly affect you as a person.

Overall I truly enjoyed this book. There were times where the stories dragged a bit, which is the reason for the half star, but I personally connected with these characters and cared to see it to the end.

Elizabeth Acevedo taught me that I could really enjoy novels in verse, so I was very excited to see what she could do with her first adult novel, and this did not disappoint. Thank you to @netgalley and @eccobooks for the early copy!
*
This is completely character driven, but the general premise of the plot is that 70-year-old Flor, who has had the gift of predicting death, decides to throw herself a living wake, convincing her whole family that she has foreseen her own death.
*
This is approached as a sort of anthropological study, where Flor's daughter Ona is recording not only what is happening leading up to the wake, but also their stories, key pieces from their past. It was a really unique approach, and I very much enjoyed Ona's interjections interspersed throughout. 
*
I was a bit intimidated at first, when the book starts off with a cast of characters, that's always concerning how many people a reader will have to keep track of! But it also described one of the characters as having "a magical alpha vagina", so how can you not be excited to find out how that plays out? The number of characters did confuse me at times, and also keeping track of their various magical affinities, I did have to go back to that list to remind myself several times.
 *
But the writing is absolutely beautiful, as expected, incredibly poetic. I very much enjoyed learning about Flor and her sisters, her daughter and niece, and I loved how everything came together at the end. It didn't necessarily entrance me as much as other books have, but I would definitely still recommend.

I love Elizabeth Acevedo’s writing, so when she announced her adult debut it instantly became one of my most anticipated releases of 2023. And Family Lore certainly delivered! What I have always loved in Elizabeth Acevedo’s books is the nuanced way she explores familial relationships between women and Family Lore did this so well! As we slowly uncover the lives of these women and the different events that have shaped who they are, we also get a glimpse into why certain relationships are stronger than others. But what I loved the most was seeing the ways that these women showed up for each other and this specific familial unit.

If you’re looking for a character-driven, intergenerational family saga with hints of magical realism this is the book for you! It also includes a “Table of Principal Persons” which I found so helpful as I got started reading the book.

Oh, Family Lore. You may have taken me two weeks to read, but that was an I-have-way-too-many-things-going-on-in-my-brain problem and had nothing to do with you.

For the prospective reader: This is Claudia Acevedo’s first adult novel, and, despite how my reading pace may be interpreted, I really enjoyed it. At first, I was a little overwhelmed with the number of characters, but Acevedo anticipated this and left a handy character list that I referred to any time I needed a name refresher. Our story kind of centers around Flor, who, after watching a documentary on the topic, decides to have a living wake. This puts her entire family on edge, because Flor’s gift is foreseeing how people will die. As they prepare for this wake, they worry that they are also saying goodbye. And while this may be the driving force of the novel, it’s not the only focus. Each woman in the family has her own dedicated chapters and her own dilemmas and hardships to work through. Acevedo ties it all together through the point of view of Flor’s daughter Ona, who presents this collection of family stories almost as anthropological research.

I think this was a pitch-perfect foray into the world of writing for adults. The themes are mature, the plot is intricate, and the sentences are lyrical. The more I read, the more invested I was in each woman’s story. This is literary fiction, much more character-driven than Acevedo s previous work, and darn good.

This book will be published August 1.

This ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This novel is a magical saga centered on a family of Dominican American women. It took me a bit of time to understand and adapt to the format through which this story is told. I wasn't sure which women were which at first because there were similarities to each of their stories. Though I soon realized how different they were. Once you get into the beautiful rhythm of the story, you'll be hard-pressed to not know these women intimately. The main plot point is that Flor wants to throw herself a living wake. However, she is gifted with knowing when people will die. She is not sharing any information with her sisters, Matilde, Pastora, and Camila. Nor her daughter, Ona, or her niece, Yadi.
At first it's presented as the story of two generations of women coming together to celebrate the living wake of one of their own. But it follows a non linear timeline that isn't the easiest to keep track of as we read about these women in their rawest form. Overall it's an engaging tale that ends on just the right note.

*Special thanks to NetGalley and Ecco for this e-arc.*

I love Elizabeth Acevedo and it was exciting to read her adult debut. I enjoyed the intergenerational family connections

An excellent multi-generational story! I loved this book. It was told in such an interesting and unique format, I really enjoyed that aspect and it made the book very compelling. The characters were a joy to read about. Often times, when books change character perspectives at each chapter, you find yourself preferring a different character and wanting to go back to another chapter. That was not the case here. I loved each perspective and wanted to know about each woman. My favorites, however, were Yadi and Ona. I loved their voices and was rooting for them. Matilde was so frustrating at times and I understood why Pastora wanted her to leave. Looking back, it was also interesting to know how their individual "talents" played into their actions. My only critique is that with so many characters, it was sometimes hard to keep track and with an e-book it is not always easy to go back and flip to that family chart at the beginning. Ultimately, this did not bother me. I would also be interested to see how the inclusions of Ona's perspective are included in the final copy. Sometimes, they were formatted strangely in the galley.

**3.5⭐️ rounded down to 3**

Thank you @netgalley & @eccobooks for early access to this e-book. It publishes on 8/1!

Although I’ve wanted to read Clap When You Land for a while, this is my first book by Elizabeth Acevedo. I know there are some differences between this and her previous work. Firstly, this book targets adults instead of her typical YA genre. Secondly, while CWYL is a novel in verse, this one is written in prose. Despite that, the writing still has a poetic touch - which could be both beautiful and occasionally a tad bit boring.

Overall, I really enjoyed the family dynamics and characters, even though there were quite a lot of of them to keep track of. The alternating POVs in each chapter added an interesting dimension, but some perspectives didn’t really hold my attention. Also, The sisters' and nieces' unique "gifts" ranged from cool to downright strange lol (think… magical girly parts 😂😂)

While I liked the story, I had a hard time getting into it and staying invested. And the ending didn't tie things up as neatly as I had hoped it would. I'm definitely interested in reading more of Acevedo's work, especially Clap When You Land, however, I'm hoping it'll be more fast-paced and attention-grabbing compared to this one.

I am a huge fan of Elizabeth Acevedo’s work, so I was very excited to get a chance to read her first adult novel, Family Lore. It is a bit of magical realism, a bit of historical fiction, and a bit of family drama.

I did really like the characters. It was fun getting to know each of the Marte sisters/daughters more as the novel progressed. Each of them had a very unique voice, which is hard to pull off when there is such a full cast of characters. Acevedo has always had such a lyrical storytelling style, and it lent itself well to this novel.

Now, I have to say that, while I liked the characters, I was confused a lot of the time as to who was who in relation to the other characters. It took me quite a while to figure out which characters were the sisters and which were the daughters, and who was whose daughter. I do wish this had been laid out in a different manner. Potentially it would have been easier in a physical copy of the book, as there was a list of characters at the beginning, but I was reading an e-book copy, so it was hard to go back and forth to check it. This was something that troubled me throughout the novel, so it colored my opinion of it quite a bit.

I liked the jumps into the past that helped to explain what was happening in the present. Getting to learn more about Santo Domingo was cool, as I know very little about it. I love how the Acevedo sprinkles her culture throughout the novel like seasoning.

Overall, it was a good story, but I wish it had been laid out in a slightly less confusing manner. This is also the first of Acevedo’s books I have not read as an audiobook. I would be curious to see if that would make a difference in my experience.

My Rating:
⭐️⭐️⭐️

I gave Family Lore 3 Stars!

Elizabeth Acevedo is an auto-buy author for me. I am convinced her YA novels are for everyone- I actually shared her last novel with my students and adult friends alike. When I heard she was coming out with another novel and it was for adults, I was so hype! Family Lore is definitely different writing from Acevedo's previous novels, not just because it is not written in verse, but the writing feels more mature. I did struggle with the first third of the novel because there were so many characters and the alternating present/past timelines. (Thankfully there is a list of characters at the beginning for those who are nervous- I read on the Kindle which is not as conducive to flipping forward and back). But I was enthralled with the characters: a very close-knit Dominican aunts and their nieces share in each other's lives and histories in the light of an upcoming living wake for one of the aunts. I will say I was almost crying at the ending but also completely satisfied.