Review: Fingerprints of Previous Owners by Rebecca Entel

Fingerprints of Previous Owners

by Rebecca Entel

Publisher: Unnamed Press

Pages: 212

Format: book

Buy the Book: Amazon

Goodreads:  At a Caribbean resort built atop a former slave plantation, Myrna works as a maid by day; by night she trespasses on the resort’s overgrown inland property, secretly excavating the plantation ruins that her island community refuses to acknowledge. Rapt by the crumbling walls of the once slave-owner’s estate, she explores the unspoken history of the plantation—a site where her ancestors once worked the land, but which the resort now uses as a lookout point for tourists.

When Myrna discovers a book detailing the experiences of slaves, who still share a last name with the majority of the islanders, her investigation becomes deeply personal, extending to her neighbors and friends, and explaining her mother's self-imposed silence and father's disappearance. A new generation begins to speak about the past just as racial tensions erupt between the resort and the local island community when an African-American tourist at the resort is brutally attacked.

Kritters Thoughts:  Myrna works as a maid at a resort that is on an island that she has lived on her entire life.  She has a feeling that there is more to this island than the resort and that things are being covered up.  She risks about everything she has to find out the truth.

I liked the concept of the book and I liked Myrna.  The execution and the writing just didn't completely hit the mark for me.  I rarely say this about the book, but I wanted more descriptions of the people and the setting.  I wanted to "see" this place more clearly and the especially wanted a little more of a picture of the "natives."  

For most of the book, I kept thinking about a resort I visit in Jamaica and had all these guilty feelings about the people who work there and going to a country where people live below the means that I do and vacationing there.  With these thoughts that I couldn't get past, I just couldn't enjoy the reading.  

If you are new to the blog, I try hard to find a reader for each book I read even though it may have not been for me.  For this one, I would say if you like short and sweet books that don't dive too deep this could be for you.  If you like the slowest of burns, and then a sucker punch at the end, then pick this one up.

Rating: enjoyable, but didn't leave me wanting more

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I received one copy of this book free of charge from TLC Book Tours.  I was not required to write a positive review in exchange for receipt of the book; rather, the opinions expressed in this review are my own.