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Review: My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

Title: My Sister, the Serial Killer
Author: Oyinkan Braithwaite
Year Published: 2018


Genre: Adult fiction
Pages: 223
Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Location (my 2019 Google Reading map): Nigeria

FTC Disclosure: I bought this book with my own money

Summary (from the inside flap of the book): Korede's sister Ayoola is many things: the favorite child, the beautiful one, possibly sociopathic. And now Ayoola's third boyfriend in a row is dead, stabbed through the heart with Ayoola's knife. Korede's practicality is the sisters' saving grace. She knows the best solutions for cleaning blood (bleach, bleach, and more bleach), the best way to move a body (wrap it in sheets like a mummy), and she keeps Ayoola from posting pictures to Instagram when she should be mourning her "missing" boyfriend. Not that she gets any credit.

Korede has long been in love with a kind, handsome doctor at the hospital where she works. She dreams of the day when he will realize that she's exactly what he needs. .But when he asks Korede for Ayoola's phone number, she must reckon with what her sister has become and how far she's willing go to go protect her.

Review: This book had a number of things that drew me to it: the title (how could you not be intrigued?!), the cover (LOVE), and the fact that it is set in Nigeria. And now that I've read it I am not exactly sure how I feel about it

Korede is a good woman. She has a good job at which she excels, cares about her sister, really likes her co-worker, and is sensible and efficient. Ayoola on the other hand is the opposite and would drive me crazy in real life. She is lazy, beautiful (and knows it), only cares about gifts from the men who fall over themselves to be with her, and, oh yeah, she kills her boyfriends!

There are no gruesome scenes, no gory details, and this doesn't read like a thriller. It's more like a family study. Will Korede stand up for herself (and her sister's boyfriends)? Will Ayoola take responsibility for her actions? Will she stop dragging Korede into her messes? Probably not, but I kept hoping so.

I wish there had been a little more movement / plot, but I also can't shake the story so that says something.


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