Review: Familia

Familia, by Lauren E. Rico (Kensington, expected pub. Dec 26, 2023)

When Gabby DiMarco submits her DNA to an ancestry company along with the rest of the staff of the magazine where she is a fact checker, she has a distant hope of maybe finding out she has a long lost cousin or uncle somewhere, as she’s been a bit lonely since both of her parents recently died. What she never expects is the result that there is someone who shares half her DNA, meaning a full sibling. And then to have that woman contact her saying she’s been searching for her desperately for decades, after her baby sister was stolen from her stroller in Puerto Rico all those years ago.

Despite thinking it was a mix-up, Gabby heads to Puerto Rico to investigate the situation herself, and maybe even get a story out of it — her first story published with her byline instead of someone else’s. But of course, she finds much more than she bargained for.

There’s a lot about this book that should have worked for me. You’ve got a sister story, a different setting, a bit of a mystery, a dual timeline, all things I like in my fiction. But what I got was a story that couldn’t quite figure out what it was wanting to be with a narration that never quite defined itself. There were moments when this book could have been lighthearted “women’s fiction”, a workplace romance, a family drama, a crime thriller, or a police procedural. The narrative switched perspectives a lot, sometimes between the two main characters, Gabby and Isabella, and sometimes into a third person past timeline when the original kidnapping took place. I love a narrative that switches perspectives. But when that happens, the narrative voices should be unique enough that I can tell the difference. Whenever I picked up my kindle to read again, it would take me several pages to figure out whose perspective I was reading from. There was also one plot choice (a sexual assault) that felt totally unnecessary to the story or character development and was instead just upsetting for no real purpose.

While the story was compelling enough for me to keep reading to find out what happened, I can’t say I’d necessarily recommend this one. There was a lot of good possibility here, but I think the story needed a more defined focus.

Thanks to Netgalley and Kensington Books for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.