This week our book review is for the Times Number One Bestseller and debut novel of Oyinkan Braithwaite, My Sister, the Serial Killer. This book was described by the New York Times as, ‘sharp, explosive and hilarious’ and it’s all those things, and more.

Korede is a hardworking nurse living with her mother and younger sister in Nigeria. She’s in love with a doctor at the hospital where she works and although she’s aware that she’s plain, she hopes that one day their friendship will spark into something more romantic. Her days are simple and ordered apart from when she is dealing with her spoilt younger sister, Ayoola. Ayoola is very beautiful and she knows it. She gets what she wants from the men in her life by making the most of her looks and her charming character. Korede has spent her whole life looking out for her impulsive, younger sister and protecting her as well as she can, first from their abusive father and now from her own actions.

Ayoola has killed twice before. She insists though that the men she has killed, her boyfriends, have attacked her, or made her terrified for her life leaving her no option but to defend herself and kill them. But Korede is tired of cleaning up crime scenes and disposing bodies. She has no one with whom she can share her burden and ends up confiding about her sister and her part in covering up the deaths with a coma patient at the hospital. When Tate, the doctor she’s secretly in love with falls for Ayoola Korede has to decided who she must protect, the man she loves or her serial killer sister.

This wonderfully clever book moves at a fast pace with short chapters and the occasional flashbacks that fill in the background and experiences that these two sisters have faced which now connect them so tightly. The first two sentences of the book hooked me firmly – Ayoola summons me with these words – Korede, I killed him. I had hoped I would never hear those words again. I suspected from that first page that I wouldn’t be able to put the book down until it’s (perfect) conclusion, and it proved to be the case.