One thing about Donna Hill, I know her books will always deliver on what was promised in the blurb, and even beyond.

My first book by her was Confessions in B Flat, that one was amazing and so is this one. I don't know how she does it. I was so invested in the story before I even started the book and, I kid you not, I opened it to the first page and started crying. LITERALLY, FIRST PAGE. THAT'S HOW HEARTBRAKING THIS BOOK IS.

I was in pain the whole time while reading, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Thank you Mrs Hill.

So this book is both a contemporary and historical novel, set in the present day but with some flashbacks/visions to the past. It's about Alessandra, a woman who comes back to her hometown because of her sick father, and stays to uncover her family history which might hold the secret to her strange visions.

She also has a helper in Zach, who's a neighbour from across the street and ohhh, I love them together. THEY REALLY WERE MEANT TO BE TOGETHER.

It's basically love at first sight, but when Donna Hill writes it you don't even notice that it's a bit too fast. I 100% believe that these two love each other.

Despite some of the hard subjects tackled, it's easy to get into the story thanks to the beautiful writing style which continues to amaze me again and again. I need to read every single book Hill has ever written. N. O. W.

The pacing is also pretty fast, but not too fast. Still, when I finished it I felt like it all went by in a flash and I wanted even more.

This is a book I'd recommend to everyone, even if you're not a fan of contemporary-historical blends, I promise you'll love this one.

*Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for providing me with an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review*

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley and am voluntarily posting a review. All opinions are my own.
I Am Ayah: The Way Home is a touching tribute to the history of Black people throughout generations. The central narrative follows Alessandra, a woman who finds herself reconnecting with her past after years of running from it. It’s beautiful to see her reconnecting with her family’s history and trying to make up for the time she’s lost. I enjoyed seeing her growth, especially as she bonds with Zach, who works for the Smithsonian. I appreciated her growth as she learned more about her family’s past, and really liked her and Zach together as a couple.
But the real standout parts are the excerpts for the historical documents with journals and letters of the people from generations past, from the time of slavery through Jim Crow (notably the Tulsa Race Massacre) and into the near past, following her mother’s experiences. All of these moments are poignant to read about, capturing each of these moments vividly and demonstrating their continued relevance to this particular family’s legacy and to Black history on a grander scale.
This is a moving read, and I’d recommend it to anyone looking for Black fiction with a multigenerational family saga and romantic side plot.

A story. With movement. A story. Of love. A story of time.
This is a historical, a romance, and women's fiction all rolled into one full story.
Alessandra is a photographer that has a different kind of sight. She gets a call to go home to Sag Harbor because her father has had an emergency. Her father she hasn’t spoken to in 2 years and hadn’t been home to see in much longer than that. She drops everything to go “home”. Upon arrival she meets Zach outside of her fathers home. He’s an anthropologist and whenever he’s in town to visit his grandmother he checks in on Alessandra’s father also.
Since she’s been back home her sight or visions are more frequent and she can’t suppress them like her mother told her to do when she was a girl. Her mother wanted nothing to do with the past, so Alessandra knows nothing of her family or their past. She visits her father in the hospital and he leads her to her family’s past.
While Zach is working on a project for the Smithsonian on a Maroon community suspected to have been near Sag Harbor he’s also working on tracing his own family’s roots. Zach and Alessandra have an instant connection. He jumps right in with whatever she needs sometimes before she knows she needs it. A chemistry they can’t explain.
As she tries to uncover the story of her family and he works to uncover the maroon community they realize that both stories are the same. They each have a missing piece to the story. That ties them both together trough centuries, through horror , through love.
A story that brings two people together that had been searching for 2 centuries for each other. Once they find their souls they recognize each other. This is the true story of soul mates. A heart. A love.
I recommend this story. Is well written, the characters are full. And there is lots of movement. They also have nasty sex, the good kind.

5 — heartbreaking— stars.

"The story of how I come to be here in this foreign land. Sometimes what I tell you will make no sense. Sometimes it will sound absurd. But in between those moments of doubts and dismissal, you may come to believe it possible that within each of us lives the essence of our existence—beginnings, middles, and endings—the paths that those before us took to bring us here."


The story embraced a poignant narrative with an elegiac and melancholic writing that harmonized between two, distinct timelines; past and present, ancestors and descendants separated by years and divided by generations, although were inherently mingled.

“I will not let these men with skin of the moon know my terror and loneliness.”


The storyline combined chapters with the first person perspective from characters sharing an identical bloodline whom endured and sustained similar tragedies and oppressions; the superstructure that dominated 19th and early 20th century and subordinated black people. Albeit their retellings weren’t recurrent along the line the impact behind them is profond and movingly authentic, nonetheless.

"The distance never seemed to put enough space between her conscience and the past."


The other chapters were the backbone of the book narrated from the third person and retraced the interior war the female protagonist was torn with. Trying to forgive her own, past and present, mistakes. Alessandra was a strong female lead but had a noxious relationship with her father since her mother’s death. She wanted to rearrange their chaotic bond at all coasts when she received a call announcing her that her father was hospitalized. One of her father’s wishes was for her to reconnect with her ancestors by understanding the epiphany behind her vivid dreams and realistic visions, from another time, disguised with ugly truths hidden by her late mother. The flashbacks were.. disturbing.

“Sometimes there’re some things that cannot and should not be explained,” she said in the musical lilt he loved to hear. “They simply exist, yeah, like the meeting of two people who share something only with each other—their unified spirits.”


The backbone chapters contained some chapters and parts with the male protagonist’s point of view, Zack. With his and Alessandra’s perspectives the storytelling flourished into a surprisingly heartbreaking and soul-moving story about fate and soulmates, belongings and forgiveness. The bond between them was transparently powerful throughout the book but intensified the more Zach helped her figure the missing segments of her ancestral tree.

"Behind her closed lids, the images of her ancestors manifested with life. They might be gone in body, but they were part of her, in her blood, in her DNA."


The plot was enticing, trying to comprehend why everything and everyone was somehow mangled together. What these past chapters relating the escape of a 15 years old girl prisoner had anything to do with Alessandra. Why Zach had always this contradictory —uncomfortable yet reassuring— impression that he and Alessandra had known each other, before?
But most importantly who or what Ayah is ? The only significance I knew to the word is the literal meaning, the religious islamic in wish Ayah means a Qur'anic verse. Seeing how easily and poetically the author has the capacity and power to torn and twist words I was convinced the meaning was metaphorical.. Oh, how wrong was I, cuz its significance brought so much more understanding and made the story more impactful in so many ways.

" I am Ayah. I am home."


•Quotes:

"Sometimes she wondered if she’d romanticized her mother simply because she was gone, or had things been as storybook as she remembered?"

"Acting as if the past don’t exist don’t make it less real; putting it behind ya don’t make it go away."

"But as new to him as Alessandra Fleming was, he couldn’t shake the sensation that he’d always known her."

"After all, everyone was a descendant."

Rated 4.5 Stars

I knew from the first page that I would love this book . I Am Ayah: The Way Home was an experience, an amazing one. It wasn't always easy to read but in those difficult, harsh and not so pretty moments there was beauty. There was hope. There was love. I loved that the most about it, that even in the worst of conditions love was present. Love was the most consistent and enduring inhabitant of this journey. I loved the way this story was crafted, how the things of the past and present were interwoven. I loved the way the author used the characters to tell this story. I adored this story. It is one that I highly recommend.

Donna Hill can do absolutely no wrong with me. One of the pioneers of romance. This story of Alessandra and Zach pulled my heartstrings and she really painted a great picture of Black Sag Harbor.

This is a beautifully written historic romance! The setting/time is the rich African American history of Sag Harbor. For many people the word home often has people thinking of places or people, not often thinking that home is actually not just a place but the feelings or reactions it may inspire or awaken in our souls. Yes home is where we start and sometimes where we end, but it is so much more. This is a story that pulls on your heart strings and will stay with you long after you have finished it. Everyone needs to read this book.

The word home usually means one of two things. It's either a place of happiness or sadness/tragedy. For Alessandra Fleming, it happens to be the latter. She left at 18 and has been living her life in New York until she is forced to return to her roots At Sag Harbor after her father suffers a life changing event. While there, She comes across some information that will change her life and she will eventually end up on a path of lessons, secrets and self discovery.

Told in two time periods, I am Ayah will take you on a journey that will make you look at your life in a different way and possibly your own self discovery and healing and how events in life eventually come to full circle. It will pull on your heart strings with unforgettable characters that you will want to hold on to forever. This is an amazing story that I will not soon forget. It makes me even that more ready to look into my family's history This is one of those books that need to be read by everyone.