#Oyinkan Braithwaite

[100-great-books]

[words-and-coffee]

The most loving parents and relatives commit murder with smiles on their faces. They force us to destroy the person we really are: a subtle kind of murder.

Oyinkan Braithwaite, My Sister, the Serial Killer

[virgilean]

Books Read in 2023: My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

“We are nothing if not thorough in our deception of others.”

[libraryspectre]

I never feel more like a weirdo than when im trying to explain to someone why Oyinkan Braithwaite's masterpiece My Sister the Serial Killer is actually a really funny dark comedy

Me, giggling: so the sister who ISNT a serial killer is a nurse and theres a guy in a coma she vents all her problems with her serial killer sister to, right? And then HE WAKES UP! And she's rushing there like "oh crap, how much of our therapy sessions was he able to hear?!" It's such a funny situation!

Them:......................................sure......................................................

[caribeandthebooks]

Caribe's New Works by Black Authors TBR - Part 2

Category: Mystery & Horror

[geriatricturkeys]

My Sister, The Serial Killer – Oyinkan Braithwaite

‘It takes a whole lot longer to dispose of a body than to dispose of a soul...’

[libraryleopard]

Thriller novel about Korede, Nigerian woman whose sister, Ayoola, keeps killing her boyfriends (apparently in self-defense) and asking for help with the cover-up

Korede has obliged so far out of loyalty to her sister, but when Ayoola begins dating a doctor at Korede's hospital, she must weigh where her loyalties lie

Nigerian setting + characters

[sheilajsn]

My Sister, the Serial Killer de Oyinkan Braithwaite

Empiezo por confesar que la única razón por la que decidí leer este libro es por Nuestro Reto de Lectura. Este año, Lizette y yo hemos decidido darle la vuelta al mundo en 365 días, leyendo libros de todos los continentes. My Sister, the Serial Killer de Oyinkan Braithwaite se desarrolla en Nigeria, así que cuenta como uno de mis dos libros en Africa. Debo decir que este año ya he leído varios…

[darkstormsystem]

Howdy Friends!

Today was the last day of classes for this semester, and my writing professor handed out books to each of us picked based on what we tended to write. She wants us to read them and be further encouraged to continue writing, so I thought I’d share it with all of you! I intend to read this on my flights home for winter break. Any of y’all have thoughts on it?

[cmrosens]

Book review: My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

5.0 out of 5.0 - MY SISTER THE SERIAL KILLER by Oyinkan Braithwaite (my 2nd read of the challenge, running from 26 Dec 2022 to 25 Dec 2023) 

I really enjoyed this. It's a fast-paced read and the tension between the characters keeps pulling you through the story! I started it for book club and then ADHD happened and I forgot all about it for a few months, very glad I picked it up again and this time just devoured it. I love the exploration of family and sibling rivalry and loyalty, but also the different motivations for remaining loyal to someone with whom you have a difficult and complex relationship. There was enough backstory to fill in the blanks, and to infer a lot of the motives that the narrator had and didn't explicitly talk about, and I loved the way it left things open and didn't sacrifice the pacing for info dumps or introspection.

Not that it lacked any of that - the whole book is quiet, contained, and the action in it is mostly off-page, since the narrator is the one with the routine and quiet personal life. That just makes the gap between the sisters more intense and adds to the sense of difference between them.

Read this if: - you like fast, light-toned reads about darker subject matter

- you're ok to read books that deal with domestic abuse (physical) towards wife and children, the punishment for which is hinted at

- you like unreliable narrators, and stories told in a mix of longer and shorter sections that feed smoothly into the whole picture like a jigsaw puzzle, so you can see the whole shape if you read between the lines as well as the lines themselves

- you want a reflective, tense story about siblings and the nature of twisted sibling relationships, disappointed/thwarted/unrequited love, and the complex adulthood pain of being eclipsed and disbelieved simply by not being the 'pretty sister', rather than an action-packed gorefest or police procedural (it's neither of these)

[words-and-coffee]

"She does not cry for me,” he says, his voice hardening. “She cries for her lost youth, her missed opportunities and her limited options. She does not cry for me, she cries for herself."

Oyinkan Braithwaite, My Sister, the Serial Killer

[straydog733]

Reading Resolution: “My Sister, The Serial Killer” by Oyinkan Braithwaite

6. A book written in Africa: My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

List Progress: 9/30

How far can familial love go? Is there such a thing as unconditional love, love that has absolutely nothing that could stop or lessen it? Most people, if pressed, have some conditions they put on the love they feel for others, even their nearest and dearest. But Korede, the protagonist of 2018 Nigerian novel My Sister, The Serial Killer, has no conditions on her love for her younger sister Ayoola, the titular serial killer. She doesn’t particularly like Ayoola, she resents her and carries a lot of anger towards the ways she has hurt Korede and others, but at the end of the day she has a cold, fierce love for her baby sister that is free of any and all conditions. And that is truly a terrible thing, but makes for a tense novel.

Author Oyinkan Braithwaite tells the story of Korede, a meticulous nurse working in a small hospital in Lagos, and her gorgeous, charming, magnetic sister Ayoola, who holds the spotlight in every room she walks into. Bonded by a traumatic childhood, Korede sees it as her job to protect Ayoola, even when she calls her in the middle of the night to help her deal with a boyfriend that Ayoola killed in self-defense. But the novel opens with the third dead boyfriend, and the claim of self-defense is ringing more than a little hollow. Korede can’t turn Ayoola in without revealing her own role in cleaning up the crime scenes, but far more important than that, she can’t turn her back on her sister. Korede gets by by unloading her soul to comatose patients at the hospital, but things reach a boiling point when Ayoola sets her sights on the object of Korede’s affections, as her next conquest and potential next victim.

Braithwaite keeps the book moving at a fast clip and the tension high, with very, very short chapters that move as quickly as Korede’s harried thoughts. The plot itself is not complicated, so this tension carries the novel. For a reader who doesn’t click with Korede, this could be a frustrating book, especially as Ayoola is an intentionally-frustrating character, but both of them get under your skin in a very engaging way. You sometimes want to yell at the page, but in the same exhilarating way that you yell at the screen for someone not to go into the haunted house. The haunted houses in My Sister, The Serial Killer are people, but they are just as filled with ghosts.

Would I Recommend It: Very much yes.

[totallyokay]

Currently reading: My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

“It takes a whole lot longer to dispose of a body than to dispose of a soul...”

[lilliankillthisman]

I didn't post about it because I read the whole thing on kindle over two slow train journeys with limited internet, but I read My Sister, the Serial Killer, by Oyinkan Braithwaite at the weekend. I'd bought it... last spring, or maybe summer 2022, but didn't get very far in; very glad I eventually went back to it.

It follows Korede, a competent, unattractive young woman with a strong sense of responsibility and a job as a senior nurse at a hospital, and her younger sister Ayoola, who has no morals and no life skills except being ridiculously attractive and charismatic, and has killed one of her boyfriends for the third time when the novel starts. Korede has always covered for her, keeps covering for her, and has to grapple with what it means to keep covering for her as the book goes on and it becomes obvious that Ayoola is going to keep killing.

Or that's what she's grappling with on paper. The moral element gets... noticeably less focus than how frustrating it is to be the responsible older sister when your awful but very cute little sister is never criticised, never faces consequences, and doesn't appreciate that you're the one protecting her from those consequences. There's jealousy, there's feelings of inadequacy, there's some very well-executed childhood backstory. There are just enough signs that Ayoola loves her sister in her own way that she doesn't come off as a caricature of a twisted cycle path*.

It's a great exploration of love and it doesn't pull any punches; I can think of half a dozen ways this book could have turned out less than it is and Braithwaite avoids all of them. She captures a unique and very interesting tone, enough that I'm surprised the British Book Awards named it Crime and Thriller Novel of the Year 2020 instead of handing the award to some unthreatening twee garbage from Richard Osman.

The book isn't primarily a comedy, but Braithwaite does lean into humour and she does so very well; there's nothing that reads as a joke but doesn't land. She also absolutely nails an ambiguous ending. Like, better than anything I've read in a long while.

*Ayoola is absolutely a caricature of a sociopathic killer but she manages to come off as remarkably deep and not particularly evil, which given what she's actually up to is an achievement.

[someonelookingpraediti]

Book Club - April 2024

April’s theme for my Book Club is “Criminal Minds”!

Every month, I pick a theme, and three books that fit with it, and then my club members vote on which one they want to read.

Our choices for April were:

Death and Croissants - Ian Moore

My Sister, the Serial Killer - Oyinkan Braithwaite

The Book Club - C.J. Cooper

For our "Criminal Minds" theme, we chose from three books about murder! Our choice was "My Sister, the Serial Killer".

[travelingviabooks]

My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre: fiction, contemporary, crime, thriller

Country: Nigeria, England

Review:

I found this to be a very easy read and I loved the way it was broken up, it reminded me of poetry. I found the story to be interesting and well-developed. The characters weren’t necessarily likeable, which is to be expected given the context, but they were interesting. The ending left me feeling disappointed though and I can think of so many other endings that I would’ve preferred over this one.

Would I recommend this book?: yes, it’s an easy quick and entertaining read overall.