Bourbon and Books: Familia

The good books don't ask permission. They wreck you at the table.

Some books you close quietly. Familia is not one of them. I yelled out loud. I argued with people who don't exist. And when I finally set it down, I poured something slow and layered — because a story about buried family truth deserves a whiskey that gives up its secrets the same way: one patient sip at a time.

That's the whole spirit of Bourbon and Books. Wine gets the book-club table by default. But a considered pour — additive-free, aged, chosen with intention — belongs there just as much. Maybe more, this month.

The book: Familia by Lauren E. Rico

Imagine waking up to learn that everything you knew about who you are was wrong — with the science, the actual science of a genetics test, sitting right in front of you. That's where Gabriella (born Marianna) begins, and Rico refuses to let her — or us — off easy. I understood the hesitation. What I couldn't forgive was the denial. But maybe that's my own lineage talking: I learned young that parents can be wrong, that they don't always hold every fact, and that people who can be wrong can also, quietly, lie.

On the other side of the story is Isabella’s life of what-ifs. What if her mother hadn't died. What if her father hadn't come undone. What if her sister had never left. I've lived in that questioning place — torn between not wanting to change a single thing for fear of losing the good, and grieving the life that never got to happen. Rico writes it as a question worth sitting with: aren't these the very events that shape who we become? Would we trade them, even if we could — the life, the love, the person we are now?

I won't spoil it, but I'll say this: the way righteousness gets weaponized here to justify the unforgivable made me put the book down and stare at the wall. It's the kind of ego — dressed up as loyalty, as faith, as reputation — that we recognize in the world outside the page. And the ending ties its bow a little too neatly around a box of lies for my taste. But that friction is exactly why Familia earns its place on the reunion table. It's a book about sisters, secrets, and the stories families tell to survive themselves. Bring it to people you love, then argue about it. That's the point.

 🥃 SOBREMESA

A wheated whiskey cocktail for lingering — and for the arguments worth having.

 Ingredients

2 oz New Dawn 10-Year Wheated Whiskey

¾ oz guava nectar

½ oz fresh lime juice

¼ oz cinnamon syrup

2 dashes aromatic bitters
 Method: Add whiskey, guava, lime, cinnamon syrup, and bitters to a shaker with ice. Shake hard until well chilled. Strain over one large cube in a rocks glass. Garnish with charred lime wheel and a cinnamon stick.

The pairing: Sobremesa

There's a word for the part of a gathering that matters most — sobremesa — the time spent lingering at the table after the food is gone, when the real conversation finally starts. That's where Familia lives, and it's where a great summer cookout ends up too. So the cocktail leans warm and Caribbean-bright: guava and lime for the island soul of this family's story, cinnamon for the ancestral kitchen, a char on the garnish for the smoke of a backyard reunion. Underneath it all, the 10-Year Wheated Whiskey holds the layers together — soft, then deep, then unforgettable.