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A review by opinionsofawolf
Carolina Built by Kianna Alexander
Did not finish book. Stopped at 14%.
I really appreciate that the existence of this book taught me about Josephine Leary - a Black woman born enslaved, freed at 9, and who became a real estate mogul in North Carolina. But I enjoyed reading the nonfiction accounts of her that I found online more than this book.
It's clear the author did a ton of research, and I can only imagine the challenge of writing something that feels like smooth-flowing historic fiction while remaining true to the source material. But for me this read like a contemporary fiction shoved into the past, rather than transporting me to the past. Some of this was the dialogue. Some of it was Josephine's internal thoughts, which felt out of time. She, for example, uses phrases that simply didn't exist in the 1800s yet.
The time jumps used also didn't work for me. I understood a little why we might jump from when Josephine is a little, recently freed, girl to her adulthood, but then there's another immediate time jump right after she buys her first property. I wanted to get to know Josephine, but I felt like I couldn't. And the flashbacks employed left me wondering why we didn't more deeply explore those parts of her life - for example, a mention of her attending a free school and earning a certificate. I felt like at least a chapter set in that time would have helped me get to know Josephine.
It's clear the author did a ton of research, and I can only imagine the challenge of writing something that feels like smooth-flowing historic fiction while remaining true to the source material. But for me this read like a contemporary fiction shoved into the past, rather than transporting me to the past. Some of this was the dialogue. Some of it was Josephine's internal thoughts, which felt out of time. She, for example, uses phrases that simply didn't exist in the 1800s yet.
The time jumps used also didn't work for me. I understood a little why we might jump from when Josephine is a little, recently freed, girl to her adulthood, but then there's another immediate time jump right after she buys her first property. I wanted to get to know Josephine, but I felt like I couldn't. And the flashbacks employed left me wondering why we didn't more deeply explore those parts of her life - for example, a mention of her attending a free school and earning a certificate. I felt like at least a chapter set in that time would have helped me get to know Josephine.