Family Lore: A Good Morning America Book Club Pick

A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK!

Longlisted for The Center for Fiction 2023 First Novel Prize

A Most Anticipated Book of 2023 from: Today.com * Time * Electric Literature * Seattle Times * Telemundo * Washington Post * HipLatina * Harper's Bazaar * Elle * AARP * Shondaland * New York Times * The Millions * LitHub

From the 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 foreseen 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: her sisters are hiding things, too. And the next generation, cousins Ona and Yadi, face tumult of their own.

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.

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384 pages

Average rating: 6.25

24 RATINGS

2 REVIEWS

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dayzee

Nov 03, 2023

5/10 stars

This book got a lot more attention than it deserved, the author is very poetic, however, the stories are so all over the place. Each narrative is disconnected and the dots don’t really connect in all the ways they need to. Overall, wasn’t worth reading in my opinion.

JShrestha

Oct 02, 2023

5/10 stars

My initial thoughts on picking up and reading this book was alot of confusion. After discussing this book with a fellow reader, it was suggested to read this at the same time as listening to the audiobook understanding from an interview from the author that their intention was to write so many point of views to show the dynamic of large families and the cultural stand points. I think if I had known that from the start, my mindset would have been different on how I approached the book. Written from the multi generational views of the women in the family line who posses special magic, you follow the women as they prepare for one of the family member's living wake. I think the author definitely wrote with the non linear intention but it wasn't executed 100% and alot of the storyline ended up not going anywhere or being properly explained. Also, having the book interrupted as background narrator by the granddaughter, Ona seemed to add more to the lack of purpose to the storyline.

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