The Book of Negroes

I recently finished The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill. I had very high expectations for the book, as everyone I know who has read it has raved about how much they loved it and how "emotionally intense" the story is. A friend of mine lent me the novel, and I delved straight away into the book.
The story sucks you right in, to the effect that you can't put the book down. Aminata Diallo is a believable heroine, an ex-slave and a respected leader in every place she's traveled. She narrates the story, in first-person participant told from a future time. The language is well thought out, but simple. Overall, a good read.
However, the book did not live up to my expectations. It was a tad disappointing. The reason could be that the events are narrated in such a way as to be distant. The novel was predictable; even the big surprise at the end was something that I predicted halfway through the story. A lot of the parts that people seemed really shocked at (the people in this case being from liberal Canada) didn't even make a tug at my heart. Perhaps I have been desensitized to violence, or at least the watered down, alluded-to violence that is prevalent in this book. Perhaps not. Either way, though I couldn't put the book down, I just wasn't satisfied with it as a whole.
I recommend this book as an interesting read, but I'm not sure if it would be worth reading twice. Feel free to disagree with my review, I look forward to hearing a counterpoint.

Books to read twice: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, and Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner