I’ve finally finished reading Yellow Crocus by Laila Ibrahim and rated it:

⭐️⭐️⭐️

The story was slow and didn’t possess anything that would make it special and because of that I’ll probably forget that I read it two months from now.

Yellow Crocus is your typical slave escape narrative with a happy ending and minimal focus on the brutality of slavery.

The only thing that separated this novel from others is that the slaves managed to escape slavery and save themselves without focusing on a single white savior.

As I think of it, the story was surface level and didn’t delve deep into how anyone was really affected by the actions of the slave owners.

For instance Lizbeth catches her fiancé raping a slave and though she mentions how she felt and the look in the slave girl’s eyes during the act her descriptions wouldn’t make me feel any sympathy for the girl if I wasn’t an empathetic black woman. Her pain didn’t move me.

A friend of mine describes things that are just OK  as mayonnaise. Mayonnaise is ok but nothing special…that’s what I would call this story: Literary Mayonnaise.