Acevedo has a beautiful and unique voice. There's never anything quite like what she puts into her prose. You can tell that she comes from a background in poetry. Each of the sisters and the two daughter POVs were all interesting especially the speculative aspect where they all had their own sort of magic. Magic that is different than what you would see in traditionally white storytelling. Family Lore keeps you gripped with an original concept and great execution.

Family Lore is a story of women and family, showing the ways we tend to love and infuriate one another across generations. When Flor, who has a gift for predicting when someone will die, decides to throw herself a living wake, the entire family is thrown for a loop. Her sisters, daughter and niece each have their own struggles, including infidelity and infertility which seem to be coming to a head all at the same time.

Author Elizabeth Acevedo covers some taboo but important topics in this very real portrayal of family dysfunction. I appreciated her straightforward approach to topics like sex and infidelity, all told from a woman’s perspective. She tells the many stories of this Dominican-American family in a complex but compelling format featuring varying points of view and flashbacks in time.

Thanks to NetGalley and Ecco for the advance copy of this book.

I was very happy to discover that I really enjoyed this book! The cover and title stood out to me when I saw it and I had high hopes after reading the descriptions. I really enjoyed learning more about the aunts and the characters and I felt a connection to them. I will be recommending this to all my friends and family!

I received an eARC of this book for review from Ecco via NetGalley, all opinions are my own.
• The Brief: Family Lore is a warm contemporary family saga with expressive prose in Acevedo’s poetic style. It tells the story of a Dominican American family narrated by two generations women coping with their entwined histories while facing future heart break.
• This story will work well for readers who enjoyed the author’s lyrical writing in previous books and is interested in seeing it put to use in a more mature story.

Family Lore is a story about the generational trauma told from the perspective six women, most of whom are blessed with magical skills. One of the elder sister’s is planning a wake for herself. Given her ability to predict death, her family struggles to prepare for the worst, resolve their past suffering, and discover their futures.
I loved Acevedo’s writing and sentence structure here, just as in previous novels. The characters were interesting and believable – although the POV voices were not as distinct as they could have been. The plot and world building was interesting to the point that for once I didn’t mind unexplained magical realism which can be very hit or miss for me. I wasn’t enamored of the way the sex and masturbation scenes were written, but that is a personal preference. This was a beautiful novel, and I’m so glad I had the opportunity to read it.

Beautiful, immersive family saga, just when I thought I'd given up on the form. Each Aunt has a distinct personality, and although Acevedo in her intro says it is not metafiction, there is so much that rings true that I can't help but think it is.

I enjoyed the strong female characters throughout the story. They were given strong back stories, which gave the story a more realistic feel. The Spanish at times was hard to follow, but I did use the translation on my Kindle to help at times. All in all, I enjoyed the story and connected with the characters.

Elizabeth Acevedo’s adult debut, Family Lore, is the story of sisters and mothers and daughters in one Dominican American family, told in the past and present, in Dominican Republic and in New York City, in the transcriptions of interviews and varying third person perspectives of the six main characters. In the present day, Flor, who has always had the special gift of knowing when someone was going to die, has declared that she is having a living wake for herself in six weeks. Her three sisters, Matilde, Pastora, and Camilia, and daughter Ona and niece Yadi, are trying to figure out if that means she’s dying, all while dealing with problems of their own, including a cheating husband, infertility, and a reunion with a first love.

There is no question in my mind that Acevedo is an incredibly gifted writer. Her language is at once beautiful and snarky, thoughtful and crass. I love the voice she gives to her characters. I loved how the stories of this family were interwoven across decades, which showed how tangled our lives are with the ones we love. Reading this on my kindle, I did have a hard time keeping track of who was who and where we were in time. While there is a list of main characters included in the front of the novel, I craved a family tree, which very well might be included with the print edition, and the ability to easily flip back to it. By about halfway through the novel, I felt more centered in each character, but it was truly till the last quarter before I was really able to keep them completely straight.

This novel is definitely for those who love big family stories that have a focus on character development, and I urge readers to pick it up based on the gorgeous language alone. I will continue to read anything Acevedo writes and am excited she’s branched into adult fiction as well.

Acevedo's writing is stellar. I really found myself sinking into her sentences and descriptions. She has a wonderful way of making you feel like you know the characters, convincing you that they are real people -- both the women and the men. I do share some of the other reviewers' concerns that there are too many point-of-view characters to keep up with. I feel like the novel would have been stronger if the focus had been tighter, even if this resulted in a shorter narrative. However, overall I found FAMILY LORE to be a lovely reading experience.

I have recommended this book to many people who want to get into reading. The author portrays the complexity of family, life, and death so well. I have read Acevedo's YA and was nervously interested in her foray into writing for adults - and hurrah for all of us!

DNF at 50%. Loved the concept, unfortunately I just couldn’t get into this. Didn’t really connect with the characters and that’s usually a death sentence for books I’m reading if that’s the case.

Usually a big fan of an Acevedo book, however this read, though similar in its aspect of portraying perspectives of various characters, I found it hard to really get into and track the individuals life situations of importance to the plot of the book. The concept of the storyline really is engaging at times, and I find myself really envisioning the irony of the situation and musing at the similarities between an African American family death and all that goes along with a church funeral.

4.5/5, rounded to 5

thank you to netgalley and to ecco for the eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!

elizabeth acevedo i LOVEEEE your beautiful creative mind

this was such a lovely exploration of family and the ties of family we have with each other and with the land and homes we inhabit, especially surrounding women of the diaspora. the entwining of magic in this family made was so powerful to me, latine women are full of magic it’s #real to me. it was a little hard to follow at times and a smidge slow, but I think overall the story came together really well and was a really dynamic exploration of family and the bonds between women in a family, especially in one that’s diasporic, and all of the intricacies that come with it.

would totally recommend this book !!!! <3

A family saga that follows 4 sisters and their families from their early days in the Dominican Republic to their lives in New York City. My thoughts on this book are probably somewhat skewed because I did not realize it was written for adults before I read it so I had to change my mindset a bit once I realized that. And then I kept comparing it to Angie Cruz's books which I absolutely loved. The writing was beautiful but I love Acevedo's young adult books and this just wasn't as satisfying for me.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy. Elizabeth Acevedo is an automatic must-read for me. I have read and adored everything she has written, so I was thrilled to read her first non-YA novel. I loved the structure of the book with all of the women’s stories told and then Ona’s research notes kind of woven through. Acevedo did a gorgeous job of capturing these characters and making the reader feel like they are in the family as well. I do think the book was maybe a touch long as it felt a bit slow in places. I tend to feel this way about most character-driven novels though, so that certainly isn’t a knock on the book. Acevedo remains a must read!

I usually love books with multiple perspectives and families and generational trauma, but this was a disappointment. The perspectives were hard to keep track of because they're all too similar. Also, it kind of lost me at the part about the magical vagina.

25% in and this book is DNF for me. I am so disappointed because I loved Clap When You Land. There are so many characters and so far, they are all unlikable and I don’t see a story developing. And honestly, in my opinion, crudeness does not make a book better, just an unenjoyable read.
Thanks to NetGalley and Ecco Publishing for the ARC and I will not be posting this review to retail sites.

This book tried to scrap together a bunch of individual storylines (some more interesting than others) and it ended up being pretty incohesive. At the beginning, I felt that I was already forgetting who everyone was and how they were related. By the end, there wasn’t a single story line that I enjoyed from start to finish.
I do think the exploration of gang affiliation, young love, and dissolving relationships is well-presented, intriguing, and thought-provoking.
All I’m saying is, if someone told me their nostril hairs were tuned to my scent all night, I’m running in the other direction.

DNF at 25%. 2.5 stars rounded up. I adore her YA writing but this read felt like a slog. SOOO many characters and so much conversation yet nothing really...happened? I was really bummed because I fully expected to love this one. The writing was good and the plot was intriguing but I was very much let down by this one.

2.5

there were so many POVs and things going on that i found myself not enjoying this. i skimmed a bunch of this, because it couldn’t maintain my interest. i’m not particularly a fan of multiple POVs, let alone six of them. i also felt like so many things were going on that made me not able to focus. elizabeth acevedo is like an auto-read author for me, so i was really excited to receive this ARC. i’m definitely eager to read any books she puts out in the future, because i tend to heavily enjoy. unfortunately, this one was different from the rest for me.

thank you to ecco and netgalley for providing me with an arc of this book <3

I usually adore Acevado’s books and read them quickly. I’m so sad to say that I struggled so bad with this story. I had a hard time keeping everyone straight. The structure of the novel just didn’t work for me. I even tried the audio and still couldn’t follow enough to get into the story. I’m so sad, but I’ll still be reading her next book.