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A review by mweis
All We Were Promised by Ashton Lattimore
2.5
*I received an eARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.*
I wanted to love this and I'm really sad I didn't. All We Were Promised is a debut historical fiction novel that centers three Black women in 1830s Philadelphia. Charlotte is an escaped slave who lives as a maid to her white-passing father. Her friend Nell is a budding abolitionist from the wealthy Black elite of Philadelphia, and Evie is a friend from the plantation she ran from who is in the city with their previous owner.
There is a lot to love here and bones of such a fantastic story. All three protagonists highlight different experiences within the Black community and the time period and location are fascinating. Lattimore does a great job of showing how divided the country was in the lead up to the Civil War and that the issue of slavery (and Black equality) was not as cut and dry as "North = abolition, South = slavery".
Unfortunately, I really struggled with the writing and the pacing. Over halfway through the book, we were still following Charlotte and Nell as they tried to come up with a plan to save Evie. There are situations where I don't mind a plot that seems to meander or take its time getting somewhere, but that was not the case here, probably because we kept getting repetition of the same kind of details. It wasn't even that we were getting too many tidbits of "real" history, it was just that the same thoughts and character motivations kept getting repeated as if Lattimore didn't trust the reader to remember or to "get it" the first time.
While I didn't love this, I seem to be in the minority of reviewers so I think it's worth a shot if it sounds interesting to you, and I did like the concept enough to not write off whatever Lattimore publishes next to see if the writing and pacing complaints I had were simply because it's a debut.
The author's note is worth a read. I definitely did not expect Lattimore's inspiration to be a song from Les Misérables but after she said that I could definitely see it and I loved seeing the real-life inspirations behind this book.
I wanted to love this and I'm really sad I didn't. All We Were Promised is a debut historical fiction novel that centers three Black women in 1830s Philadelphia. Charlotte is an escaped slave who lives as a maid to her white-passing father. Her friend Nell is a budding abolitionist from the wealthy Black elite of Philadelphia, and Evie is a friend from the plantation she ran from who is in the city with their previous owner.
There is a lot to love here and bones of such a fantastic story. All three protagonists highlight different experiences within the Black community and the time period and location are fascinating. Lattimore does a great job of showing how divided the country was in the lead up to the Civil War and that the issue of slavery (and Black equality) was not as cut and dry as "North = abolition, South = slavery".
Unfortunately, I really struggled with the writing and the pacing. Over halfway through the book, we were still following Charlotte and Nell as they tried to come up with a plan to save Evie. There are situations where I don't mind a plot that seems to meander or take its time getting somewhere, but that was not the case here, probably because we kept getting repetition of the same kind of details. It wasn't even that we were getting too many tidbits of "real" history, it was just that the same thoughts and character motivations kept getting repeated as if Lattimore didn't trust the reader to remember or to "get it" the first time.
While I didn't love this, I seem to be in the minority of reviewers so I think it's worth a shot if it sounds interesting to you, and I did like the concept enough to not write off whatever Lattimore publishes next to see if the writing and pacing complaints I had were simply because it's a debut.
The author's note is worth a read. I definitely did not expect Lattimore's inspiration to be a song from Les Misérables but after she said that I could definitely see it and I loved seeing the real-life inspirations behind this book.