This novel captures beautifully a friendship between two young girls, who, to a large extent, are forced together and excluded from other friendships because of their connections with “The Family”. I didn’t enjoy it as much as I once would have. My taste in reading has altered dramatically since the pandemic and other, more personal, worries have entered my life. I now find it difficult to find enjoyment in distressing themes and storylines. The book, however, is well written and moving, and describes the fears and claustrophobia of belonging to a Mafia background.

I received an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author Naomi Krupitsky.
This was a very involving novel and the premise was interesting. The characters were well written and developed. However, the story itself felt like many elements were missing and glossed over. I wanted to hear more about the Family's work, more about their business during the war, and a bit less about the day to day lives of the women. With that in mind, the ending felt rushed and a bit unsatisfactory. Would still recommend as it was interesting to learn about life as part of a mafia family in the US during this time.

I enjoyed this story about friendship and growing up in a family with Mafia connections in mid 20th century New York. The author portrayed a setting which was both threatening and warm, describing large family gatherings and enduring loyalties based on past acts of kindness and betrayal. The mob itself is a minor character in this story but underpins the values and connections between the characters which makes it a more interesting take on this type of story.

Oh, I'm sorry but i couldn't get on with this book.

It was so slow and I easily became bored and felt like I was wading through treacle.
Not for me I'm afraid. :(

Thank you NetGalley for allowing me the chance to review this book.

I've just spent about four days with Sofia and Antonia best friends, and both first generation immigrants. Their parents are best friends, and hail from 'the old country'. Antonia and Sofia's lifes are shrouded in love, honour, respect, family, and The Family. Their life is in soft focus 'They know certain things absolutely, and do not know that there is anything they do not know, the world comes into as they grow'. It is only after devastation visits them that they understand the other side of The Family, inescapable, trapped, and merciless...
A powerful tale of love, family, survival, and violence

I really struggled to get into this book. I found the pace too slow and didn’t feel I could connect with any of the characters

Although this book is set amidst the backdrop of mobsters, it is more about the relationship between Sofia and Antonia from their early years. They are inseparable, they drift apart and then they come to rely on each other again. Sofia is directly related to Uncle Joey (head of The Family), while Antonia is on the fringes.
The beginning of this book, although interesting, is rather slow I think but it gains momentum as it develops.
You never can escape The Family and survive! But there is hope.
Many thanks to Netgalley/Naomi Krupitsky/HarperCollins UK for a digital copy of this title. All opinions expressed are my own.

This was a great read and the mob aspect was so interesting, particularly from a woman's point of view. Very atmospheric .

Mafia themed stories have long been a favourite of mine and I was intrigued by the premise of this title. I really enjoyed the majority of the book, the chapters discussing Sofia and Antonia growing up were truly captivating. There was a genuine warmth and affection between the two families and I could imagine these scenes and the setting of Brooklyn, really easily and wanted to read on.
I thought it was quite realistic that the two girls’ relationship waned over the years, yet, they still turned to each other in times of deep indecision and crisis, regardless of their ages. There post adolescent years are shaped and formed rather quickly – each girl ending up with a husband, perhaps slightly sooner than she had anticipated. It seemed quite predictable that Sofia, the stronger of the two, would end up narrowly avoiding being an outcast from ‘The Family’ and then working for them.
However, as the book developed I became less enchanted with the storyline and the ending was incredibly brief and Antonia’s actions seemed so out of character that it wasn’t really credible for me. I wondered if it has been left for a follow-up title to be published.

This had so much promise but honestly I found it to be a bit too wishy washy in its content - the girls childhoods took up too much of the book; I personally felt this could have been condensed then more time given ti their adult lives. The ending wrapped up too quickly for my liking.

This is a story about friendship and family life in the USA.
Antonia and Sofia are friends and also part of the same Family. With a capital F. i.e The Mafia.
The story is set during the Great Depression and the Second World War.
A really enjoyable book. I will definitely seek out more books by this author.

Fans of Elena Ferrante’s novels, Italian family sagas, and coming-of-age novels should snap up this novels. Sofia and Antonia, grow up as the daughters of Italian immigrants involved in unspoken business in the Brooklyn neighbourhood of Red Hook. They are firm and loyal friends, with Sofia’s daring side and Antonia’s reasonable manner complementing each other perfectly and both girls emerging as strong, vivid characters on the pages of the novel. The novel follows their intertwined lives over a period of twenty years that stretch from the Great Depression to the Second World War, through their childhood, high school years, and into early adulthood. When Antonia’s father Carlo, who had secretly hoarded money in the hope of taking away his family away to a new life, disappears, the girls’ bond is severely tested. With astutely drawn, complex characters and written in elegant, sparking prose, this is a novel that subtly explores heavyweight topics in an intelligent, empathetic way. My thanks go to the publishers and to NetGalley for the free ARC I received in exchange for providing this honest and unbiased review.

Thank you to @naomi_krupitsky and @BoroughPress for this advanced copy of The Family in return for an honest review.

Description 🔖

Sophia Colicchio is strong minded, free spirited and fiercely independent. Her best friend Antonia Russo is quieter, more reserved and observant of the world and it’s inhabitants. The two have been best friends since birth. Their childhood homes separated by nothing more than a stone wall and their fathers bringing the households together via The Family; the unspoken community.

Antonia’s father has never thought that he belonged in The Family but when he started to make plans to leave, he soon after disappeared. His disappearance splinters the relationship between Sophia and Antonia however as they grow into adults and mothers their friendship holds. Sometimes they have conflicts and sometimes they don’t agree with each others decisions but they remain loyal to each other.

General Thoughts 🤔

This was a nice coming of age story with a bit of a twist; these girls were growing up within the mafia. Being a teenage girl is hard at the best of times, but I can’t imagine how hard it was to be a teenager in the epicentre of one of the families. Personally, I don’t think that this book used that quite enough. These girls were literally being brought up by the mafia and I would have thought that would have given scope for some pretty exciting and dramatic avenues in the story. However there wasn’t really a lot that happened. There was drama at the end, but up until that point, I found the story a little bland.

Characters 👫👬👭

The two main characters were obviously Sophia and Antonia. They were near enough polar opposites of each other but remained friends their entire lives. I thought that their personalities balanced each other out quite nicely and even though their relationship went through it’s weaker stages, the two of them were there for each other when it really counted. I thought that their friendship was beautiful and that any two people would be lucky to have one like it.

The character that intrigued me most was Saul; Sophia’s husband. He was brought into The Family strictly for business, but ended up being a leader within The Family by accident. I felt quite sorry for Saul through a lot of the book. I never got the impression that he decided on where his life was going and all of his life choices were made for him. I imagine that he played a lot of “what ifs” through his mind.

Writing Style ✍️

I think that this author has strength in writing characters that have complex and interesting relationships. There were plenty to pick apart within this book.

Unfortunately, the story wasn’t strong enough for me to stay interested for long enough to become heavily invested in the characters which was such a shame. I think that their was potential for a more interesting plot that would have made me more inclined to get closer to the characters without turning this book into a huge drama.

Conclusion & Scoring 🎖️

Unfortunately, this book and I were not a match made in heaven. For some reason I just couldn’t settle into it and reading it was very much a stop/start experience. I did like the characters and the relationships within the book but I thought it lacked a strong enough storyline to support them. I wouldn’t however give up on this author and I would read more of their work.

Sofia and Antonia are two best friends who are part of a Mafia family in New York. We see them grow from young girls just before WW2 into mothers with children of their own. Sofia is the senior girl, her father is head of a Family, Antonia's father is disappeared by the Family and the consequences of that reverberate throughout. With some great narrative around the grief of the mother. Despite their childish dreams they remain in and of the Family, both marrying Family men.

This is such a rich exploration of friendship and family and culture - so much more than just another Mob story. The complexities and the fears take us on a rollercoaster of emotions with the two. young women. The side story is of Saul, a young Jewish immigrant/ refugee who is taken in by Joey, Sofia's father, and who becomes his second in command. He loses and gains a family when he joins the Family. .His mother is back in Berlin and he never hears from her again. She wanted him to be saved when she sent him away but has he in fact become lost too as he divests himself of his Jewishness to marry?

The subtle nuance of what it means to be family thread this book. I really liked it and found much of it very true ( post partum depression, the loss of a parent ...)

The writing is skilled and I look forward to reading more from this author . Thank you for an ARC of this novel

Sofia and Antonia have been friends since childhood. Born to Italian-American families living next door to each other in Brooklyn their lives have been intertwined since birth. But there's more than proximity that binds them together. Both their fathers belong to the American Mafia, which envelops them in a wider family, while putting a distance between them and other children in the neighbourhood and at school.As a result the two girls become closer. Even so, from an early age there are marked differences between them - one happy to accept the role laid out for her, as wife, mother and home-maker; the other always wanting more, from eavesdropping the men's conversation as a child to wanting to earn her own place among them as an adult - but despite their differences, friendship holds Sofia and Antonia close, the way the Family does, even when the Family itself drives a wedge between them, after the 'disappearance' of one of their fathers.

This astounding debut is a story of friends, family and Family; a big warm novel exploring the ups and downs of female friendships against the backdrop of the totally male world of American mafia. I recently read an article on Crime Reads that 'family' with a small 'f'' was at the heart of the great Mafia stories like the Godfather and the Sopranos - that that sense of belonging and desire to protect family lifted them above other gangster movies /tv series and gave them something that everyone could relate to. The same is true here. Family lies at the heart of Sofia and Antonia's world - in fact, it's all encompassing; children are protected from knowledge of what their fathers parents actually do for a livelihood, and later boys are found a place within the business, girls expected to marry into the family. But this is a Mafia story with a difference - one told mainly from the perspective of the women who sit waiting and worrying when their husbands are later home than expected, or turn up with injuries and blood on their hands, but know that they won't receive honest answers if they ask where, why or who.

Spanning twenty or so years, from the 1920s to late '40s, it follows Sofia and Antonia from childhood as they grow into women, marry and have children of their own, and to an era when the Family's prohibition and war-time profitability is on the decline, and new money-making schemes are needed. I loved it for its characters, its scale, its writing style which drew me in and held me. I rather hope this isn't the end of the Family's story.

The Family is the debut novel by Naomi Krupitsky and is published today, November 2nd, in digital/ebook format with The Borough Press (Hardback Jan 6th). It is described as ‘a captivating debut novel about the tangled fates of two best friends and daughters of the Italian mafia, and a coming-of-age story of twentieth-century Brooklyn itself.’

I read, and was completely captivated by, the Neapolitan novels by Elena Ferrante, so on seeing that The Family was being compared to this renowned Italian trilogy I was immediately intrigued. I have a special place in my heart for Italy, and all it encompasses, having visited the country many times. I fell passionately in love with the culture, the people, the lifestyle, the scenery but was always very much aware of an undercurrent, of something darker hiding in the seams. The Italian Mafia, also known as La Cosa Nostra and of course The Family, is an iconic enigma that has been portrayed in its many forms over the years on the big and small screen, and of course through works of fiction and non-fiction. The violence, the brutality of the Mafia is recognised globally as their tentacles stretch far and wide, in particular in the US where many emigrated in the last century looking to create new markets, new places for the organisation to expand.

In The Family Naomi Krupitsky brings the reader into the lives and homes of two families, the Colicchios and the Russos, Italian immigrants with connections. It’s the 1920s and the influence of The Family is rife. For two best friends, Sofia Colicchio and Antonia Russo, these are the years when they are oblivious to what their fathers do. All Sofia and Antonia want to do is laugh and play together, making up imaginary games and just having girlish fun. With two very different personalities, their opposing traits create a strong bond and the girls always felt their friendship would remain strong forever. Never really aware of the fact that they do not have a larger circle of friends, it is only when they start school that they notice that they are treated differently. Kids start saying things about their fathers and mothers tell their sons and daughters to stay away from Antonia and Sofia. But small kids are mostly oblivious to the world around them, until one day Antonia’s father goes missing, his body never found. The adults know what happened and why and a fracture appears between the Russos and the Colicchios. The enormity of the truth filters out gradually over the following years and the relationship between the two friends struggles to survive.

Sofia is in awe of The Family and is fearless in her actions yet she can never be satisfied with her lot, wanting more, wanting to be more. Antonia is more reserved and sees a different life for herself, away from The Family, away from the people who she knows were responsible for her father’s death. Her mother never recovered from the trauma and Antonia lived quite a lonely life as her teenage years passed her by. She hid away between the covers of her books with a greater plan to go to university and to be someone else. Her mother warned her never to fall for a Family man, but the heart does its own thing and Antonia soon realises that she cannot escape her heritage, she cannot escape her past.

The Family explores the tensions that arise in all families, as well as that most fraught of relationships between mother and daughter, but it also has an extra layer delving in between the cracks of two families that are caught up in something much bigger than themselves. The Mafia are not an organisation that anyone can join. It is not a personal decision to leave. Choice is always capped, with fear ever present. As a member of The Family you get certain benefits. There is a power synonymous with its name but there is always the terrifying knowledge that once in you never, ever leave.

Sofia and Antonia both make decisions that are reckless. Their friendship crumbles a little at times but it never disintegrates fully. Underneath the chaos and all the pain, there still stands two little girls who swore an oath to remain best friends forever, to always be at each other’s side no matter how tough life got.

The Family is a coming-of-age tale of friendship, loyalty, resilience and courage. The world that Sofia and Antonia inhabit is far-removed from what most of us would ever experience but Naomi Krupitsky expertly brings the reader into their lives, into their homes and into their minds. Their pain is raw, their love is passionate, their fear is real. I hope we will hear more from the Russos and the Colicchios in the future, as they most definitely have more to tell, but we will just have to wait and see.

An amazing novel based on family life in a small neighborhood of Red Hook, Brooklyn. This is a neighborhood where outsiders are not welcome and the Family always comes first. Antonia and Sofia are close friends and their families are part of the mob.

Antonia and Sofia have known each other their entire lives, growing up as neighbors, however, it's never easy to leave the Family and find your own life, however, their devotion to each other is relentless and they lose and find each other repeatedly.

Thank you Netgalley and HarperCollins UK for the opportunity to review this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Sofia and Antonia are the closest of friends. They are part of the Family, that it, the Mafia. Both of their fathers have been drawn into the Family almost without knowing it. Things change when Antonia's father, Carlo disappears. He wanted out and Antonia vows she will follow her own way and be rid of her heritage. Of course, as the saying goes, Man plans and God laughs and it doesn't turn out quite the way she wants.

I was very ambivalent about this novel at first. It moved very slowly and I wasn't sure about the use of omniscient narrator to tell the story. However I stuck with it and felt that it improved a lot in the middle with the ending perhaps letting it down (although perhaps this is because it leaves us quite abruptly and maybe the author is going to continue with the story in another volume - I hope so because I'd love to see more). The strength in this book lies in the characterisation and all of the main characters are well developed. Antonia is by far the more sympathetic of the two friends with Sofia having a more ruthless streak. It was also interesting to read a Mafia story which was much more from the female perspective, All in all, after a slow start I really enjoyed this and would love to read more about The Family. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

I loved it from the first page. I'm not a fan of mafia stories as a genre but this sidesteps the cliches of machismo to view mob life from the female viewpoint. It's a slow burn to start with but so beautifully written that it's a joy to linger over every word. Don't be put off by the comparisons to Elena Ferrante if you don't love her - this is much better!

I got The Family by Naomi Krupitsky, from NetGalley for a fair and honest review.

The Family is a story of two girls Sofia and Antonia, from New York, you have been friends since birth.
The only downside in their life is that their fathers are both in the mafia.
This affects them even more when Sofia’s dad kills Antonia’s father when he wants to escape the Mafia lifestyle.

The Family is a story of about the Mafia, in New York set in the period around World War 2, however unlike most stories on set around this area, The Family, mainly tells the story of the wives and children of the members.
This is a novel which can set the scene of a mafia family, of the period, with the family meals on a Sunday, in addition to the interactions of their normal daily lives and how these are affected by legal activities.
In addition to the girl’s life told in relation to being connected with the Mafia, it also covers a range of subjects, that relate to being a young woman growing up, in 1940’s New York.
The Family is one of those books for people who enjoy novels set around the American Mafia, however with a slight twist as it concentrates on what it is like to be related to gangsters.
In addition to being the growing pains of two girls set in this world, which makes The Family by Naomi Krupitsky a highly recommended read