My Sister, the Serial Killer

Korede is a nurse with a younger, prettier sister who is much more than a thorn in her side. Ayoola, whose easy kind of beauty appears to radiate off her, might be the favorite child, but she’s also, to Korede’s great annoyance, a murderer. When the 2018 novel My Sister, the Serial Killer opens, Korede learns that another one of her sister’s boyfriends has died, and it was Ayoola who stabbed the unlucky suitor with a knife. As hilarious as it is incisive, Oyinkan Braithwaite’s debut novel runs at full speed as Korede realizes that her crush at the hospital might just be her sister’s next target. Braithwaite isn’t deeply concerned with the question of why Ayoola is killing her lovers—the casual throughline of murder only adds to the zaniness of the book’s tone. The author is much more interested in the complex relationship between the two women. In detailing Korede’s quest to protect her sister, despite her dramatic (and deathly) tendencies, Braithwaite asks just how strong the bond between siblings really is. The result is a wholly original, and at times surprisingly moving, modern thriller. —Annabel Gutterman

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