So much potential. There are so many opportunities to tell a great story, but ultimately I believe the book suffers from over-ambition. As a result, the book lacks tension, and while we know of the protagonist's anguish, we never really feel it. Additionally, the protagonist happens upon opportunities that make her story significantly different than most slaves' stories. The "good" things that happen to her make for a less believable story as they seem far too convenient or contrived. In fact, the last "good" thing to happen to the protagonist caused me practically to throw the book across the room. (I'm reading on my iPad, so that's ill-advised or I would have, really.) Perhaps the author's choosing to name the protagonist after his eldest daughter disabled him from being able to create a character with whom the readers could feel suffering.

There is great potential for themes on which the author also did not capitalize, e.g. the idea of "home," or even the theme suggested by the book's title. Unfortunately, I didn't find these themes to be fully fleshed at all.

I did learn some things about the slave trade and history of slavery about which I was unaware, which I appreciated.

What a great book! And I was needing a good read after a long dry spell. Historical fiction, beautiful language, engaging characters - everything I needed. Thanks Andrea for the heads up.

Incredible story with such great characters. It's on my list of favourite books and most memorable characters with Aminata

I flew through this book and found it hard to put down. Great story, great characters, informative without being dry and text-book like.

Many authors have extolled the virtues of a name. Something so seemingly simple, yet something that has the power to determine one's future and tell one's history. It is an unmistakable, indelible part of one's identity. For someone to know your name, there must be a common understanding of language. A civil meeting. An introduction. History.

Under the cover of night, Aminata is brutally taken from her homeland and forced to endure unimaginable tragedies at the ripe young age of eleven. Her tribal land is burned. Her family taken from her as she watches. Her freedom gone. She is forced to march for weeks on end towards the ocean where she is thrown onto a slave ship. The atrocities experienced on the ship drive grown men mad. Strip survivors of the ability to talk. Somehow, the young girl survives...

Aminata's life is full of tragedy. Loss. Hardships. Yet, she endures. She says herself, it's no wonder she is still alive as she should have died many times. She escapes enslavement in South Carolina and finds work as a scribe for the British. The conditions and hardships lead her back to Africa, then to London. All the while, she witnesses the same horrific conditions that sent her running years earlier. Never able to establish a home, a family, she longs for the caring touch provided by loved ones. She longs for the familiarity offered by a community. Most of all, she longs for the sound of someone saying her name. Her real African name.

A book that will be impossible to forget.

I liked this more than I thought I would. It is always difficult to explore this part of our history, but this story did it well.

This was a brutal story that told the story of Aminata Diablo’s life. It follows her capture from Africa across the middle passage to the United States. Her experiences there are hard to comprehend in some places and her resilience, determination, survival it testament to her strength. The suffering and hardship in this book for made for a really difficult read.

I thought the writing made me believe she was not a character of fiction. Her voice resounded clearly to me and it look me longer to read than usual as I had to put it down a few times for a few days to process what i had read. It’s really unbelievable what life holds for some of us and slavery truly was despicable. I am a History teacher and i know a lot about the lives of those captured but this was such an in-depth description of horrendous behaviour that it really was taken aback.
This was a 4 star read for me. Heartbreaking to read, it also contained one paragraph which made me so angry I nearly threw my kindle across the floor. I did enjoy this book despite some bits being truly brutal.

I really liked reading this book. I like any book that teaches me something that i didn't know and this booktaughtmea lot. Meena was a strong character and someone to admire. The atrocities that take place in this story are hard to read about. Interesting to learn about how Canada played a part in the slave trade.

Powerful narrative, richly detailed, excellent portayal of history, moving and disturbing.

A wonderfully written book about the 18th century slave trade, the treatment of Black Loyalists in Canada, the resettlement of former slaves in Sierra Leone, and the British abolitionist movement. Tragic, upsetting, and moving, but not nearly as dreary as all that sounds. The Book of Negroes is told as the first-person narrative of Aminata Diallo, and covers everything from her childhood in an African village with her parents and her abduction by slave traders at the age of 11 to the end of her life in London as she tells her story to Parliament in an effort to help end the slave trade. Not always an easy read, but always a compelling one. Definitely worth reading.