Despite my low scoring of this book I found it extremely well written and the premise interesting but the crucial reasons for my low scoring are for two reasons: 1) The narrator is a one-dimensional female who never finds her own voice and therefore is completely complacent and 2) The ending was lacklustre and disappointing after leading up to, what I thought, would be a climactic ending.
In my effort to be sarcastic as possible I'll say that the story is exactly what it says on the packaging, the sister (and narrator) being Korede and the serial killer sibling being Ayoola but the side effects include disappointment and predictable plot points as Korede is the 'ugly sister' who is pretty much ignored and can't get the balls to ask her crush (who's also a work colleague) out on a date and Ayoola is the 'beautiful sister' with men falling head over heels for her but that doesn't stop her from stealing Korede's crush.
If you know me then you know I can't stand one dimensional characters and although Korede isn't as bad as Bella Swan (and consequently Ana Steele) the fact she doesn't even fight for her own moral understanding or her man is quite pathetic to me. I understand her choosing family over Tade (her crush) and I would have been fine with it if only I felt like there was more of an emotional internal struggle for Korede to have to choose between the two loves of her life.
Having grown up with an abusive father her resignation to the situation seems quite logical to me and there s a scene where she seems to be pondering as to whether to sell herself and her sister out to the police but I use the word pondering quite loosely. As a female character who continually has to clean up her sisters dead bodies you'd think that there'd be more on Korede's emotions. It's clear that she's blocked them off, developing OCD, in a form of obsessive cleaning, in order to cope with her inability to outlet her feelings in a way that seems almost self flagellating and pitying. As someone who had OCD I know you don't actually feel anything other than the chaotic need to get the things you can control set to a level standard, the need of which becomes so great that you can't focus on any thing else. Meanwhile it seems Korede doesn't actually seem to come to any great emotional conclusion with these cleaning sprees, using them to plan actions instead, but those actions lack any emotion to them whatsoever, not even an air of detachment which I found a little strange. My point is that for a person who cleans up dead bodies she seems neither dead inside nor alive either. Even the passion for which she defends her sister seems unimaginative.
Now that I've torn this book to shreds I would like to reiterate that it's well written and has an original premise but outside of that I can't say anything nice about it. Part of my disappointment is that I found none of the characters empowering, even Yoola, who murders as a direct result of her abusive father, neither enjoys killing, hates killing or seems driven to kill, was disappointing to me. She lies easily knowing and using her sister to cover for her but is there any air of deceptiveness, or guilt? No. I only wanted Yoola to get caught as some form of personal validation that no evil deed goes unpunished or for some kind of plot twist where Korede pays for her sisters crime while Yoola goes free, but alas, after all that build up both women get away with it without batting an eyelid as they both lie through their teeth leaving me to wonder why I stayed up until 3am to read the book in the first place.
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