My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite was the first fiction audiobook I listened to / read. I don’t often consume audiobooks and don’t know that I’ve ever listened to a fiction book on audio. This was a fantastic place to start!

The audiobook experience:

I got this as a digital audiobook download from my library (another first for me) via Overdrive. It took me about a day to finish; it’s short at four hours and eighteen minutes. I listened to it while doing yoga at home at least twice. The narrator, Adepero Oduye, was amazing. She captured each character perfectly and I never felt confused as to who was speaking.

The book itself:

The story takes place in Nigeria and the protagonist, Korede, is a nurse and the responsible older sister to Ayoola who is the sociopathic sibling in question. It begins with Korede as she helps take care of the clean up of yet another dead boyfriend. It’s startling and funny. As the book goes along we learn more about how both sisters ended up where we meet them, killer and cleaner, and about their lives in Nigeria.

Then Ayoola meets and charms the doctor that her sister loves from afar. Will it all happen again? Is he different? She’s obviously a killer but will she find a reason to kill again? Read it to find out.

Braithwaite masterfully uses their story to speak about patriarchy and misogyny. In fact, it seems like Ayoola killing her boyfriends isn’t that strange. Because at it’s core misogyny is violent and patriarchy does little to rein it in; in fact, one helps to reinforce and perpetuate the other. And survival and even thriving in a violent society might require more violence to garner autonomy. If men can and will harm women why not fight back? She also looks closely at the strangeness of social media and boundaries therein through Ayoola’s total immersion in it and lack of understanding of necessary boundaries and illusions to avoid outing herself as a killer rather than maintaining the guise of grieving girlfriend.

I loved this book. I’d listen to it again, and definitely want to add it to my bookshelf.