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A review by bags_and_bookz
The Company Daughters by Samantha Rajaram
3.0
Thank you Netgalley, Bookouture and Samantha Rajaram for free e-ARC in return of my honest review.
17th century Amsterdam. Jana Beil is a young girl, who run away from abusive house, only to end up in a brothel. She made her escape from there and found herself hungry and lost in Amsterdam knocking on wealthy people’s doors in search of house work. Jana is lucky and Master Reynst offers her a house cleaning job. She met his daughter, Sontje. Through many years of friendship and hardship, Jana and Sontje found themselves as Company Daughters on one of the colonies, where they must be married to one of the colonists.
I loved the theme of the book. The idea of basically selling oneself for a possible better life somewhere is hard to believe and yet it did exist. Throughout many years of colonialism human trafficking was flourishing not only in terms of slave trade but also women trade as a wife material. Samantha Rajaram did amazing job in setting the scene of old Holland and its traditions. She did fantastic research on the topic and the book is very impressive in its novelty
However, if I feel that the premise s amazing, the execution felt short for me. I did not enjoy writing style, it was dry and uninspired. In terms of character development, only Jana was evolving greatly. The rest of them, even Sontje, was flat and mundane.
Overall, good book, I learned a lot and it facilitates my further research into the topic.
17th century Amsterdam. Jana Beil is a young girl, who run away from abusive house, only to end up in a brothel. She made her escape from there and found herself hungry and lost in Amsterdam knocking on wealthy people’s doors in search of house work. Jana is lucky and Master Reynst offers her a house cleaning job. She met his daughter, Sontje. Through many years of friendship and hardship, Jana and Sontje found themselves as Company Daughters on one of the colonies, where they must be married to one of the colonists.
I loved the theme of the book. The idea of basically selling oneself for a possible better life somewhere is hard to believe and yet it did exist. Throughout many years of colonialism human trafficking was flourishing not only in terms of slave trade but also women trade as a wife material. Samantha Rajaram did amazing job in setting the scene of old Holland and its traditions. She did fantastic research on the topic and the book is very impressive in its novelty
However, if I feel that the premise s amazing, the execution felt short for me. I did not enjoy writing style, it was dry and uninspired. In terms of character development, only Jana was evolving greatly. The rest of them, even Sontje, was flat and mundane.
Overall, good book, I learned a lot and it facilitates my further research into the topic.