I used to be much more impulsive about buying books. I kept a short wishlist mostly just bought by mood and feel and sometimes even by cover art. I’d browse through my favorite authors for something I didn’t already have, look through the new and sale racks, and I ended up with a lot of great reading . . . and a fair amount of not-so-great, but I’ve learned I can’t be pleasantly surprised without taking any risks. I also ended up with a too-homogeneous library. And so I started keeping a much more comprehensive wishlist that helped me diversify my books, but that also meant I mostly looked for specific books instead of just browsing. Once in awhile, though, a shiny object gets through, and on a recent trip in one of my favorite bookstores, I picked up a copy of Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer, which the bookseller told me had just gone on the shelves that morning.
The story begins with Ayoola calling on her sister Korede for help after she’s killed another boyfriend. Since this isn’t the first time, Korede knows exactly what to do. After cleaning up the crime scene and dumping the body. Ayoola acts as if nothing has happened, drawing the suspicions of her boyfriend’s family. Korede has her own life to worry about with her nursing job in a hospital and her crush on one of the doctors, Tade. Korede’s worlds clash when the beautiful Ayoola arrives unannounced to take her to lunch, only to catch Tade’s eye and snap him up as her new boyfriend. Korede now has to deal with her own jealousy while trying to keep Tade from becoming her sister’s next victim.
I enjoy stories that subvert expectations of what they’re going to be about, and I also prefer crime/mystery/suspense stories that are less about what already happened and more about what’s going to happen next. By calling her book My Sister, the Serial Killer, Braithwaite has taken us in that direction. We already know Ayoola has killed multiple times, so the tension comes from whether she’s going to be caught, whether she’s going to kill again, and whether she’s going to take Korede down with her. Unfortunately, I didn’t really care whether either sister was caught, since they’re both culpable beyond the first killing, and I also didn’t care whether Tade became Ayoola’s next victim. All of the characters were too shallow, both in the sense that they weren’t fully developed and in the sense that they were presented as shallow, superficial people. Without sympathy for any of the characters, there’s no tension, and without tension, what’s the point?
And yet, I didn’t hate this book. It was an enjoyable enough read, briskly paced, and I liked how Korede’s occupation and cleaning compulsions worked in her favor when she needed to help Ayoola. I liked the flashbacks involving their family’s troubled history, and I liked the subplot involving Korede’s comatose patient. If anything, I think this book would have benefited from being longer, allowing for greater development of the characters and subplots, but I recognize that’s a matter of taste. If you’re looking for a quick read and enjoy the crime genre, you could do far worse than My Sister, the Serial Killer, but you could also do far better than to take my advice.