An overambitious historical novel but an impressive debut. ( )

This book was offered to me free online, and it looked interesting. I've always found slave stories intriguing, if not frightening.

This one follows 14 yr old Ayanna, or Sarah, or Anna (whatever her name is), who has been enslaved since the age of four, on her quest for freedom. So she runs away and settles in a little town, where she sets out to be a teacher.

As you can tell from my rating, I didn't much like this book. I just despised the writing. I couldn't read more than a paragraph without the horrible writing yanking me out of the story. I don't know exactly what I detested. Just somethings about it was some clumsy and the overused adjectives were misplaced. There were too many anachronisms to count. I didn't like the narrator at all. She was stubbornly naive, but the author tried to make her perfect and it just wasn't working. The other characters were bland. Despite the authors extensive research, it just wasn't realistic enough.

It's been done better before, and I'm afraid I can't recommend this one. I really tried to like this one. I read ths book for a month and only got halfwaay through. I couldn't take anymore. ( )