My Sister, the Serial Killer (Oyinkan Braithwaite)

My Sister, The Serial Killer: A Novel
Oyinkan Braithewaite
Anchor
Fiction, Humor/Thriller
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: From childhood, Korede and her sister Ayoola have been opposites. Korede is tall, homely, disciplined, and obsessed with order and cleanliness, while Ayoola is the messy, flighty, petite beauty of the family, the one their mother coddles and has the highest of hopes for (insofar as landing a wealthy and influential husband). But Ayoola does have a few little quirks that have kept her single, that her mother doesn't know about... such as her habit of stabbing boyfriends to death. Three to date, as Korede knows too well. After all, she'd hardly be a supportive sister if she didn't help Ayoola clean up her little messes (and keep their mother in the dark). It's a tedious, lonely life, but family must come first, always and forever.
Until Ayoola turns up at Korede's job and steals the heart of the doctor Korede has secretly pined for for years.
Now Korede is torn. She can't warn him without exposing Ayoola's secret - and her own. She can't just stand by and let him sleepwalk into a knife, either. Has Ayoola finally crossed an uncrossable line, or are the bonds of sisterhood still thicker than yet another boyfriend's blood?

REVIEW: With a certain deadpan humor and some wrenching emotion, My Sister, the Serial Killer explores the fallout of family abuse, the consequences of generations of cultural denigration of women to mere object status (even in their own eyes), the unfair weight society puts on physical appearance as predictor of personal virtue, and the complicated and contradictory bonds of sibling rivalry and sibling loyalty.
From the start, where Korede is helping clean up yet another crime scene with jaded exasperation, the twisted nature of the girls' relationship is front and center in the tale, which focuses on Korede as she wrestles with the monstrous, bloody-tusked elephant in the middle of their Nigerian home. As the story unfolds, flashbacks to previous boyfriends/"incidents" and their abusive, shady father show the roots of the dysfunctional mess. It's not just that Ayoola is basically a psychopath, who has to be reminded to show some appearance of empathy when her boyfriend goes "missing", nor is it just that Korede has been pressured all her life to enable her more beautiful (and therefore more desirable and liked) sister; it's that becoming a killer and a killer's accomplice was almost a sane and rational response to extremely oppressive and abusive situations, compared to how other women in the story end up handling their own stomped-down lives and the men who too often do the stomping (as much out of active malice as out of casual ignorance). Korede's few attempts to speak out are usually met with derision and disbelief, with listeners suspecting her of jealousy over her prettier sister's success with boys and social media. The one man Korede does have feelings for, and has spent years earning the respect of in the workplace, is a goner the moment he lays eyes on Ayoola. Meanwhile, the girls' mother obliviously criticizes Korede for not being more supportive of Ayoola, and the family of Ayoola's last boyfriend start pushing the police (who are generally more interested in coercing bribe money from the populace than actually investigating crimes) for answers... all of which tests just how far Korede is willing to go for the sake of a sister who inherently cannot feel gratitude for the effort, or the willfully ignorant mother who will never see her as anything other than an ugly failure.
I thought the ending felt a bit flat after the buildup, and sometimes it leaned a little hard into the horrific way women are treated by men (and by each other), which managed to shave a half-star off the rating. Other than that, though, it's quite memorable, if also quite dark.

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