This short stunner of a book is darkly comic, feminist, and biting; should family come first when your sister is a serial killer?
This is a short stunner of a book and it's hard to believe that this is a debut novel. It's that good.
Set in the vibrant, noisy, dense city of Lagos, Nigeria, Korede is always cleaning up after her younger sister Ayoola, who is self-absorbed, entitled, and by most people's accounts, beautiful - at least on the outside. Ayoola has men, and women, fawning all over her, and worst of all, she's now stringing along the doctor that Korede has admired, and who she works with, for a long time.
Korede covers up her sister's lies all the time, and the biggest of all being that she's a serial killer - she has killed three men now - but how long can she do it? How can she NOT do it (it's her sister)??
Author Braithwaite has written a book that is darkly comic, feminist, thoughtful, and biting, and I couldn't read it fast enough. I wanted it to be longer although it was actually perfect in that it's a short book with concise chapters with clever titles. There is a lot of underlying commentary about beauty and its power, and also about deception, family, and denial.
I really hope to see more thrillers out of the talented author Oyinkan Braithwaite.