Family Lore

Family Lore is a story of two generations of an immigrant family. Most of the family members possess unique powers, ranging wildly from the ability to predict death to having an affinity for limes. Beyond their powers though, they all also face many challenges which is where their inner strength shines through, and what the book is mostly focused on.

Throughout the book we get to know this family via mostly flashbacks as they prepare for one of the sisters' living funeral. Since this event is planned by the sister that can tell when someone will die, it makes the family face the possibility of losing her, and their own mortality. They're also each at a precipice of their own, making them face where they are in life.

Family Lore is made up of things I love: it's written by Elizabeth Acevedo, it's a family saga and it's magical realism. While I am glad I read it, and there were a lot of parts in it I really liked, I also never fully connected with it.

There are a lot of different topics handled in the book, infidelity, immigration, sexuality, infertility, and familial and romantic relationships. Acevedo handles each of these topics beautifully.

While I mostly appreciated reading their stories, my reading experience wasn't entirely smooth. I felt like it dragged in so many points that it just made me want to stop reading it altogether. I think partially this was because it's very vignette-like. If the character development or the writing were better, perhaps those might have gripped me. Basically, while there were many moving moments, I was not usually moved by them.