Tribal Lores - Archimede Fusillo

Tribal Lores follows young Frankie Rescio, a first generation Australia with Italian immigrant parents. Frankie just wants to fit in, like his neighbour Lockie Marsh's family. Everywhere Frankie goes, he carries around the death of his younger sister, Amelia, and when Lockies older half sister moves back in, Frankie is constantly reminded of what could have been. For Frankie and his friends, China, Spicks, Go and Lockie  navigating being a teenager is hard, navigating being a teenager when your home life is rocky is even harder.

What follows is an adventure of fitting in, understanding and growth. 

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I was given serious looking for Alibrandi vibes with this book. I was laughing so hard initially when Frankie was explaining how his parents were different and did things differently to the next door neighbours. I loved the growth experienced by Lockie, as he started to become more and more involved in Frankie's family and realised that they're rich culture was what held together their family. However, this book left me super confused. I was confused about which decade this book was set in, there were references to the 70's but then Frankie would talk about searching online which wasn't around until the 90's. Due to the colloquialisms used this book could not have been set recently because people are wayyyy more accepting of foreign immigrants and wouldn't use words intended to hurt immigrants by purposely pointing out their differences. There were many terms used and events that occurred that i was easily able to relate to my parents, given they are first generation Australian to Italian immigrant parents. But there were many things i could not relate to because it felt more like my generation. It made it really difficult to connect with the book after the first 100 pages and i felt more like i was reading rather than being in the book. For me this book was missing something, i didnt feel like i learnt something after reading this book; like an insight into Frankies family or growth among his friends. In fact for the most part i felt a surface level connection between Frankie and his friends. The need to fit in, really shaped how Frankie acted and after the car accident, it didnt even feel like the ripples of that were felt among Frankie and Go. They visited China in hospital and the book ended. I felt the ending was really rushed and didn't really explore the psychological implications of a young person losing friends to a car crash. 

Aside from this, my biggest gripe was Frankie's sister. Throughout the book, Frankie always refers to Amelia as his younger sister, and he remembered her as a baby. However, he told Lockie that his mum baked a cake for Amelia for her 18th birthday. Later on in the book Frankie said he was in year 10, which would make Amelia his older sister. This was super confusing for me and it was another reason i couldn't connect well with this book. 

What i did like, i didn't expect this book to end the way it did and that was a giant surprise. 

⭐️ ⭐️ /5

*** Thank you so much to Harper Collins for sending me this book for review, and to Ausyabloggers for including me.