I had extremely high expectations for this book. Between the awards and the "best of" lists, I was itching to get my hands on a copy. Well, I finally did, and despite loving the premise and some individual things about the narrative, I just don't think it lived up to my expectations. If you're a fan of retellings, you'll probably like this novel. Personally, however, I struggled with the writing style.

WRITING: To be honest, Everett's writing style in this book was just not for me. I don't know if I missed something or if I truly just didn't vibe with the style; I desperately wanted to like it, but I struggled.

Sentences are simple, which in itself is fine, but Everett also tended to start a lot of them with "I." I know this book is written in first person, so it's to be expected, but there were paragraphs where maybe 4 or 5 sentences in a row had the same construction and it was a little distracting.

There were also moments when I felt like Everett was telling rather than showing, and this really got on my nerves when several important things happen off page. For example, Huck simply tells Jim about faking his death and what he saw when he went to look after Jim's family. I know these are Huck's experiences, but hearing them being just related to Jim wasn't so interesting as, say, potentially seeing what Jim's inner state was like. A lot of the book is also dialogue, which means a lot of things are quite literally told. The balance, in my opinion, felt off.

The pace also felt way too quick for me. Scenes themselves are short, making chapter short, and while some people might like that, I often wished scenes were more drawn out so we could get a feel for their importance.

Related to that, I also felt like Jim lacked the interiority that I was excited to read about. Jim tells us that he worries for his family, that he has a plan, etc. But we never see his thought processes that lead him from one emotion to another. For example, we don't see him evaluate different plans for helping his family; he just suddenly has one after a certain point. We also don't see how he went from hearing second hand that he was going to be sold to deciding that the thing he needed to do was run away right then (no evaluation of risks, no real work to show us how he knew his family wouldn't be affected, etc).

PLOT: The plot of this book is a rough retelling of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, from Jim's perspective. Learning that he is to be sold, Jim runs away and is joined by Huck, who has faked his death to escape an abusive father. Together, Huck and Jim travel down the Mississippi River, and Jim sheds light on the way a black slave has to navigate the world.

On paper, there was a lot to like about this plot. I liked the idea of getting more nuance from Jim's perspective, and I especially liked the moments when Black folks were working together under the white slavers' noses. I also really liked the focus on language and how Jim talks about conforming to expectations.

I also liked that Jim had these moments when he would dream about having conversations with various philosophers. Unfortunately, this only happened a couple times and both were way too short, but I enjoyed the concept and wished these interludes had done more to interact with the narrative.

I think I would have enjoyed my reading experience more if I didn't feel like I was rushing through every scene. There's a lot in this book that could have been used to think more deeply about race and institutionalized slavery, but the pace is so quick that I felt like I had no time to breathe. Maybe that was deliberate, as Jim himself was on the run, but I feel like I missed out on a lot.

Lastly, I don't quite know what to feel about the female characters in this book. There aren't many, but two in particular left me feeling disappointed: Sammy and Katie. Both are slaves and both have horrible things happen to them, but we don't get much time to get to know them as characters and we're stuck in Jim's perspective after their demises. I do get that female slaves were treated horribly, but I'm also not sure if this book quite did them justice.

CHARACTERS: Jim, our protagonist, is easy to sympathize with and I liked the way he deliberately switched his language to achieve his goals. I also liked that this narrative explored some of the complexities of slavery (such as some slaves being loyal, etc) through Jim's eyes. I'm not sure that Jim had much personal growth, and I would have liked to see a stronger arc. To be fair, he does become more bold and defiant by the end, but the shift felt a bit abrupt.

Huck felt like an appropriate side character, not taking the focus away from Jim. His actions and friendliness were endearing. I do wish his friendship with Jim was built up a little more and that the lead up to the reveal about Huck's past was better foreshadowed.

Most of the other side characters were fine. I liked how Norman was used to explore the complexity of passing, while the minstrels were used to think about white people who say they respect Black folks but really don't.

TL;DR: I desperately wanted to love this book, but ultimately, the pace was too swift for me. If it had slowed down, I think there would have been more opportunities to build up emotion and reflect on the complexities of Jim's world.