So I finished this book, which had been recommended to me by my mother and several friends, the Book of Negroes. While I enjoyed the idea of the book, the book itself disappointed me. I found the plot to be highly unlikely, and the book to be kind of poorly written. I felt like the author's pacing was off, and that he used big words and horrific events to cover it up.
I read the book over the course of about five days, and overall, I found it to be an easy read. As I stated before, the main character's line in the story is highly implausible, an African-born woman who is stolen from her country at the age of 11, sold into slavery, and whose life follows a series of unfortunate and fortunate events. While it's not my opinion that having implausible or unlikely events in a book is erroneous, I do believe the book would have fared better and seemed more believable in the hands of a more capable writer.
The Book of Negroes did, however, interest me in the Canadian "free" colony in Nova Scotia (although I wish the author had spent more time discussing it), and in Canada's (Britain's) role in ending the thievery of native Africans and their subsequent sales into slavery in North America and Western Europe. I intend to visit my library and read some non-fiction works regarding this subject thanks to this book.
Final Star Rating: 3 out of 5 stars. Roots, this is not, but a decent book on an interesting part of the world's history.
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