A darkly fun, twisted ride, exactly what I needed to clean my palate. I’ve been cursed a little with my book reading lately, one I really liked I forgot at my father’s place before finishing it and another one that I’m reading is amazing, but also so freaking depressing, I manage like five pages and then I need some time to recover from them.
This I found by chance, I remembered the cover from the bestseller stacks, ordered it and devoured it in one day. It’s such a delight! Which probably is a weird thing to say about a book in which a beautiful young woman murders men, and then relies on her not-as-beautiful sister to clean up after and cover for her.
The title couldn’t be more Dead Dove Do Not Eat and this straightforwardness is the book’s biggest strength. There’s not one word too much in this, it is quite short (the 226 pages probably would amount to 150 in a normal print format, so it’s more like a novella than a novel) but it says everything it has to say and I live for that. Gimme to the point storytelling that focuses on the main character and her motivations, nothing else. We hardly ever hear anything about the victims, nor the murderous sister herself, we only see her through Korede’s eyes and experience how she impacts her life.
Which is a very relatable life, despite me and her not having much in common on paper. Her longing and feeling of inadequateness must speak to many people, I unfortunately understand the dynamics behind her co-dependent relationship with her sister all too well too, and out of these few, not too fleshed out threads that leave plenty of room for the reader to fill in, the author unfurls the drama and tragedy of the story.
It’s pretty brilliantly done, I can see why this became so successful, I can also see why people who prefer more background on their characters might not this too much, but to me it’s a perfect, compact, easily-digestible read that still thrills you and gives you goose bumps in the end.