River Sing Me Home

This was a good read and it was interesting reading about the lives of slaves and the difficulties they faced.

The reason it is 4* and not 5* is because I, for some reason, found it difficult to connect with the story/characters. I'm usually a pretty empathetic reader, but I found something lacking whilst reading this.

The writing was decent, but like I said, I just found something lacking.

Thank you to PH and Eleanor Shearer for the chance to read this book.

My heart is in pieces, but I adored River Sing Me Home so much. It's a story of survival, family, discerning the meaning of freedom, and most of all, a mother's love and hope for her children.

When the so-called end of slavery comes, Rachel is quick to learn that the word has only changed to ‘apprentice'. Seeing that nothing will change for her and unable to stomach the thought of another six years of confinement and brutal labor, she takes off in search of the children that were taken away from her and sold. This is no easy feat, not even sure if any of the five have survived. She doesn't let her think about this possibility too much. She is determined to reunite with them at any cost.

I loved the writing, the characters, the descriptions, and the history that went into this book. I learned a lot not having studied much about the Caribbean islands at all. It was quite slow at several moments, however, it worked well for me in this context. We get to know Rachel intimately as well as the memories of her children. I particularly loved Mary Grace and her story. While the heart of this book is about Rachel's natural-born children, this is also a story about found family. This is definitely one to take your time with and let it all sink in.

This book was not at all what I expected. Each character was flat and lacked personality. It lacked emotion and at times, while things were like that back then, it felt like certain things happened only so the author didn't have to write the reunion and quickly get to the end of the book. For the subject matter I felt no emotions being genuinely conveyed. It just felt like the author tried to make you feel something but it was unsuccessful. The ending was flat and was very much a WTF moment. If the story had really pulled off the emotion I expected the ending would have been an amazing one.