My Sister, the Serial Killer

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Oyinkan Braithwaite
Genres: Fiction
Pub. date: Nov. 2018 (read Aug. 2019 on Audible)

Woo, this was a fun little novella! It was a mistake to buy this on Audible because I listened to it way too fast! Seriously, I flew through it in like 3 days. Great narrator though!

I’ve seen this book popping up in a few places, but I wasn’t sure if the premise was exactly as the name suggestions… it is. My Sister, the Serial Killer is set in Nigeria and is told from the point of view of Korede, a young nurse whose sister has a suspicious tendency to be forced to kill her boyfriends. Ayoola always has a reason, either he attacked her, or tried to rape her, or he just happened to be poisoned while they were out to dinner together. But she consistently looks to her straight laced sister to help her clean up the mess.

Korede is torn between her obligations and loyalty to her family, and her fear for the men of Lagos. Either way, she decides to keep quiet. But when Ayoola starts getting close with one of the doctor’s at her hospital, she can’t deny she is torn about what to do.

Despite the gruesome nature of the plotline, this was a fun little book. Honestly, I found Korede’s dilemma highly entertaining. The author infuses a lot of humour into the story and the juxtaposition of the humour against the dark storyline really compliment each other wonderfully. This is the kind of extremism that really highlights human nature. On one hand, Ayoola is clearly crazy and should be locked up, but on the other hand, you can’t help admire her guts. Korede totally enables her, but what other choice does she have unless she decides to turn her sister in. After the first time, she’s an accessory in the murders, so to turn on her sister would also be the end of her life too.

it’s a short book, but I liked it that way. It was tightly plotted and you have to admire an author who says what they need to say and then moves on. No superfluous writing in this one!

Born a Crime

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Trevor Noah
Genres: Memoir, Non Fiction
Pub. date: Nov. 2016 (re-read Jul. 2019 on Audible)

I read Born a Crime several weeks ago as an Audiobook. I first read Born a Crime as an e-book with my Book Club in 2017 and absolutely loved it. But I was feeling like a re-read and decided to go with the audiobook this time since it’s narrator by Trevor Noah. Either way, you definitely can’t go wrong with this book, but I’d say the audiobook definitely has an edge over the e-book.

I wasn’t planning to write a review for this book because I thought I’d already written one, but when I went back and checked my goodreads, I’d only written a little blurb that was never posted to my blog, so I’ve decided to write a proper review since I love this book so much.

I recommend this book to people a lot. They always look at me kind of like “really? Trevor Noah? The comedian?”, but I totally stand by my recommendation because this book has so much going for it! It’s hilarious, interesting, and it damn matters. Sure there’s a lot of comedic memoirs out there, but Trevor Noah’s memoir is all about growing up ‘coloured’ in Apartheid and post-Apartheid South Africa.

South Africa’s have been broken down into factions for many years: white, black, and coloured, which is everyone in between. In Trevor’s case, he was considered coloured because he was mixed race – his mom was a black South African and his dad a white Swiss. Trevor was literally “born a crime” and had the interesting experience in his childhood of never really being allowed to be seen with either of his parents. Whites and blacks weren’t allowed to date or marry, but Trevor’s mom wanted to have a baby anyways and largely kept their relationship a secret.

In post-apartheid South Africa (when Trevor was around 10 I believe), they could finally be seen together, but Trevor struggled for years with his identity. He had a decent relationship with his Dad, but they eventually drifted apart, so everyone else in Trevor’s life was black. He is pushed to identify as coloured and for a while tries to access all the different sides of his identity, but eventually comes to the conclusion that while he looks coloured, he is black.

Trevor crams a lot of hilarious stories into this short memoir and it is definitely one of the few books that had me laughing out loud throughout. Even when he gets serious about South African politics and all the shit his mother went through, he still infuses a lot of humour into the story, which makes it a joy to read. His childhood was fascinating, as were his formative years growing up and trying to make it in Johannesburg. If you’re looking for an account of how he became a successful comedian, you won’t find it in this book, but you will find a lot of anecdotes about South African culture and oppression.

But the real hero of this story is Trevor’s mom. I talked about her briefly in my first review, but she is really what made this book for me. It’s hard to believe a poor, coloured boy who was literally born a crime could become so successful, but after learning about his mom, I know exactly how it happened. She is an independent and headstrong woman who is not afraid to go after what she wants, even when the deck is stacked against her. She acts as a wonderful foil to Trevor’s childhood antics, but you can tell everything she does is grounded in a deep love for her children and a deep love for God.

Say what you want about religion. But I absolutely believe in the God that Trevor’s Mom believe’s in. She is a zealous woman, but her faith is inspiring. The final chapter of this book is pretty much the most insane thing I’ve ever read, but it can’t help but make you believe that Patricia Noah knows something that the rest of us don’t about faith and religion.

Ultimately, this is a series of stories from Trevor’s childhood and young adult life. Every story offers a different insight into South African culture, but they all weave together a story of a remarkable mother and son.

When All is Said

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Anne Griffin
Genres: Fiction
Pub. date: Jan. 2019 (read in Aug. 2019)

I’d heard such wonderful things about When All is Said that I convinced my book club to read it… and then missed the discussion for it! Turns out, they all loved it! It was our highest rated book so far this year and a much needed “good read” after a bunch of disappointments.

That said, while I liked this one, I think it might have been slightly overhyped to me and it wasn’t quite as good as I was anticipating. It definitely delivered on the heartwarming novel I was expecting, but there wasn’t really anything unexpected in the plot, which ended up being a tiny bit of a disappointment. I kept hoping for just a little bit more, but I guess that is the beauty of the book too. It’s narrated by Maurice as he looks back on his life after the death of his wife. What makes it beautiful I guess, is that his life is both remarkable and unremarkable at the same time, much like most of us that live on this earth.

The story is told through a series of 5 toasts to 5 of the most important people in Maurice’s life. There’s a real feeling of nostalgia and finality throughout the course of the book as Maurice toasts all the people that had an impact on his life to his son. Each toast reveals a different part of Maurice’s life, from his childhood, to the courtship of his wife and birth of their children, to the great sadness of his life, the death of his wife. Throughout his life story, he also reveals the impact that some of his early interactions working for a rich Irish family, the Dollards, had on both his life and on the Dollards. How one action can have long lasting impacts and influence your outlook on life for years to come.

The story with the Dollards was quite interesting and I liked how the author wove it into the rest of the novel. It’s never the center of the story, but it pulls it together. I thought the writing was good and I’m impressed that this was a debut novel. But like I said, nothing really unexpected happened in this story and I kept wanting just a little bit more out of it. It reminded me of other books I’ve read that have featured senior protagonists (A Man Called Ove is the most popular book that comes to mind), and while I love all these books, I would have liked to see this one do something a little bit different with the story, although the storytelling through toasts was undeniably creative.

An excellent debut though and I’m excited to see what Anne Griffin writes next!

The Blackhouse

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Rating:⭐⭐.5
Author: Peter May
Genres: Mystery
Pub. date: Feb. 2011 (read Jul. 2019)

DNF @ 67%

I was going to try and stick it out, but I can’t do it. My Dad’s been trying to get me to read this series for ages and finally picked it up as an audiobook, but it’s just not working out for me.

Even though I haven’t finished it, I feel like I have experienced enough of this book to give it a bit of a review. Honestly, I would probably still give this a middle ground 3 stars, but it started dragging on and I just don’t have the motivation to finish it. It’s possible it’s the audiobook and I might have enjoyed it better as a print book.

The premise is interesting enough. It’s a classic police investigation story where the investigator is forced to return to his childhood home and confront the trauma of his past. The setting is in remote Scotland, which I actually really liked, and I did think Finn was a complex and interesting character. But only half of this book held my attention. Interestingly enough, I actually didn’t care at all about the present day mystery. Finn is forced to go back to his childhood home to investigate the grizzly murder of the town bully. At the same time, we get flashbacks to an overall mundane childhood.

But it was his childhood that intrigued me. The story is very much character driven by a number of seriously flawed individuals and I was actually quite interested in the drama and intrigue between Finn and his best friend Arthur and their mutual crush, Marshali (don’t know actual spelling as I read as audiobook). There’s a lot of interesting details about the way of life in this remote Scottish town that I found pretty interesting. So it does beg the question why I’m deciding to DNF.

Perhaps I might return to it, but I found the murder investigation pretty boring. I’d tune out for long periods of time, such that I was listening to this while running one day and suddenly realized I had no idea what had happened and had to go back more than 20 MINUTES to get to a place I recognized because I tuned out for so long. I’ve been trying to DNF books a little more when I’m not enjoying them, so even though I think I could push through this one, I think I’ll find something else more engaging.

Sorry Dad, don’t think Peter May is for me.

Searching for Sylvie Lee

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Jean Kwok
Genres: Fiction, Mystery
Pub. date: Jun. 2019 (read Aug. 2019)

I really like Jean Kwok’s writing style. I read Girl in Translation last year and loved it and have been dying to read Searching for Sylvie Lee since I first read the synopsis. Both books are quite different, but left me with similar feelings. I feel like both were probably 4 star books, but something about the writing and the characters just makes me feel very strongly about them and in the end, I rated both books 5 stars. Searching for Sylvie Lee does get a little dramatic and unbelievable towards the end, but because the book was really about character development for me, I can let it slide.

Searching for Sylvie Lee is told from multiple perspectives, with the most dominant (for me anyways), being told from the point of view of Amy. Amy is younger sister to Sylvie and both are daughters of Chinese-American immigrants. Their parents moved to America and struggled to survive, deciding to send their first daughter, Sylvie, to the Netherlands to live with her grandmother until they could afford to give her a better life. She returns at the age of 9 (I think, can’t quite remember), after the birth of the second daughter, Amy. The story is narrated by Amy, Sylvie, and their mother, so we get many perspectives from this small family.

To Amy, Sylvie is the epitome of accomplishment and she greatly looks up to her, considering herself the lesser sister. To Sylvie, Amy is the image of innocence. She works very hard to be successful because she feels her parents will never love her as much as Amy since she was raised away from them for the first part of her life.

When their grandmother becomes ill, Sylvie returns to the Netherlands to say goodbye, but disappears before returning home. No one knows what happened to her and Amy’s dutch relatives don’t seem too concerned about Sylvie. But Amy knows Sylvie would never just disappear like that, so she jumps on a plane for the first time in her life and travels to the Netherlands to search for the truth.

This is the prefect family drama about all the feelings of love and resentment that exist within the family dynamic. Everyone has their own secrets and the unspoken past has had longstanding and far-reaching consequences on the entire family. Sylvie has a life in Holland that none of her family in America could really understand and the impact of growing up under the thumb of her Aunt impacted her in ways the sisters don’t understand until much later. Sylvie struggles to be the daughter she thinks she should be, while Amy is afraid to live her life the way she would like to.

Everyone has secrets and they have been tearing the family apart for decades without them even realizing it. This is very much a book about the immigrant experience, but also a book about living courageously. I thought that each character was well realized and developed. Everyone had flaws, but it only made them more relatable and served to make me empathize more with each character.

Like I said, it’s a character driven book, but it does have a strong plot to support it. We’re propelled by the mystery element of what happened to Sylvie, but discover so many secrets and deceptions along the way. That said, don’t come to this book looking for a mystery/thriller. It’s not the driving force of the story, but rather a tool to connect with the deeper pain and anguish of each of the characters. The ways they’ve been wronged, the mistakes they’ve made, and the ways in which they’ve been misunderstood.