Book Review By Faveya, Year 9 Student

The novel ‘How far we’ve Come’ is set in two time periods: Obah is on a plantation with other slaves and Jacob has come from the twenty first century to rescue her. Jacob feels guilt for his family’s ancestral involvement in slavery and wants to help Obah and decides to take her back to the twenty first century. Obah soon realises how difficult it is and that she needs to fight for her freedom like her friends on the plantation.

The author, Joyce Efia Harmer, came to my school and gave a speech and told us how she came up with the idea of the book and that she had got inspiration from her mother and that made me want to pick up the book and understand the plot of the book and what happens.

‘How far we’ve Come’ is about the protagonist Obah who dreams of freedom and in the “big house” she imagines escaping  as rebellion rises around her. I found the way it was written in patois very interesting. It intrigued me because it is very rare to have a novel that uses patios as the main dialect. This young adult novel explores freedom, slavery,rebellion, having hope for change and  laments how racism and inequality will always be present in the world. Joyce Efia Harmer successfully tackled these challenging topics- she caught my attention immediately from  the first couple pages. One small aspect I disliked about the novel is that I couldn't feel the romance between two of the characters. I think she missed an opportunity where she could have developed the relationship between them  more.

Overall, I would highly recommend this novel because it’s an eye opener to see how hard it was for slaves to fight for their freedom and Miss Harmer showed Obah realising she should fight for her right and her freedom herself.