Kindred Review

I picked Kindred up on a whim at a bookstore in Birmingham. I’m so glad I did. Let’s get to my review.

Synopsis

Dana’s torment begins when she suddenly vanishes on her 26th birthday from California, 1976, and is dragged through time to antebellum Maryland to rescue a boy named Rufus, heir to a slaveowner’s plantation. She soon realizes the purpose of her summons to the past: protect Rufus to ensure his assault of her Black ancestor so that she may one day be born. As she endures the traumas of slavery and the soul-crushing normalization of savagery, Dana fights to keep her autonomy and return to the present.

My Thoughts on Kindred

I don’t know how to review Kindred because I absolutely loved it. It was a rollercoaster of emotion from the very beginning. And it completely destroyed my heart at the end. Butler didn’t waste any time throwing the reader into the story. I was a little concerned about that at first because I was a little worried that I wouldn’t have time to connect with the characters. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. Every character, even the side characters, had such distinct personalities and motivations. I think the characterization is what made this story so effective. It brought a horrible time in history to life. History books glaze over the human emotions surrounding each time period. They focus on facts instead of feelings, which causes people to miss the big picture. Every event that happened in history happened to a living, breathing person. Kindred reminds us of that.

This book was probably one of the most thought-provoking books that I’ve ever read. Every now and then a story comes along that completely changes the way I view the world, and this was one of them. Seriously, I could gush for hours, but please just go read Kindred. It’s a true masterpiece.

Oh, and if the sci-fi label scares you just ignore that. There is very little sci-fi involved, only the time travel. Otherwise, it read like a historical fiction.

My Rating: 5/5