Audiobook Review - The Familiar

Well, it’s been a while, hasn’t it, dear reader? I didn’t plan to be away for so long. Real life kept getting in the way and the last thing I read (Normal Rules Don’t Apply by Kate Atkinson), I left it so long to write a full-on review on the blog, I wanted to try and see if I could write a review/mini-write up on Instagram.

 
Note to self: if I do this again, MAKE NOTES while you reading using Goodreads and StoryGraph. 
But we’re not here to talk about that, are we? We’re here to talk about The Familiar.

Title and Author: The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo

Publisher: Viking/Penguin

Bought, Borrowed or Gifted: Audiobook Bought

Buy From (Affiliate): uk.bookshop.org

Set in Spanish Golden Age, we follow Luzia, a scullion. She tries not to be seen, but she uses scraps of magic to make life a little easier. But when her mistress discovers that Luzia can perform  little miracles, she demands that Luzia uses them to better the family’s social position. But what begins as simple amusements for the bored nobility takes a dark turn when  disgraced secretary of the Spanish King, Antonio Pérez, and his familiar, Guillén Santángel, sees her and takes a dark interest in her. 

Luzia seizes the chance to better her self, but as her notoriety grows, the danger of her Jewish blood grows as, if she gets found out, the Inquisition’s wrath will be unspeakable. She has to stay several steps ahead. But the rules are always changing in the Spanish court and not everyone gets out alive.

I think I have to finally admit to myself that historical fiction and me aren’t going to get along and I need to stop pushing this genre onto my TBR lists. 

I struggle with them. This audiobook took me a month to get through. I started it the week of release, but I really struggled to connect with this. Plus, my brain was all over the place So I couldn’t really focus on this. But, when I did sit down and listen, I found myself bored and not connecting with the characters and the story. 

The story felt very slow and quite heavy (at times) for me. I like stories to have some pace when it starts, but it felt as if it took an age for the plot to charge forward. If you are a fan of slower burn of a plot where you get to know the characters, this is for you. But I find I like to know characters when they are doing something or when the plot is moving. 

While I wasn’t a fan of the story and the characters (they’re flawed characters, but not exactly likeable. I understood why they behaved the way they did, but I found it them frustrated and every time I found an element of them that I liked, something happened and I would be back at square one with this character), I am a fan of Leigh Bardugo’s writing and it fits so nicely with the audiobook’s narrator, Lauren Fortgang. I know she has read several other books by Bardugo, but this partnership works.

But this wasn’t for me. If you are a fan of historical fiction with an edge of magic, you should check it out. But be warned, it is a slow burn of a plot and can be heavy in places. 

As for me, like I said earlier, I think I have to admit that historical fiction, while a genre I like dipping my toe in and out of, isn’t the genre for me. I do have some on my TBR but I have heard really positive things about them so going to take the risk, but am going to go into them with low expectations.