Book Reviews
It's Lagos noir—pulpy, peppery and sinister, served up in a comic deadpan courtesy of the narrator…The chapters are brisk…The narration is clean and efficient; the characters lightly sketched. Psychologizing is kept to a minimum…This book is, above all, built to move, to hurtle forward—and it does so, dizzyingly. There's a seditious pleasure in its momentum. At a time when there are such wholesome and dull claims on fiction—on its duty to ennoble or train us in empathy—there's a relief in encountering a novel faithful to art's first imperative: to catch and keep our attention.… This scorpion-tailed little thriller leaves… a sting you will remember.
Parul Sehgal - New York Times
A rich, dark debut.… Evocative of the murderously eccentric Brewster sisters from the classic play and film “Arsenic and Old Lace,…Braithwaite doesn’t mock the murders as comic fodder, and that’s just one of the unexpected pleasures of her quirky novel.… A clever, affecting examination of siblings bound by a secret with a body count.
Boston Globe
A taut, rapidly paced thriller that pleasurably subverts serial killer and sisterhood tropes for a guaranteed fun afternoon.
Huffington Post
Campy and delightfully naughty.… A taut and darkly funny contemporary noir that moves at lightning speed, it’s the wittiest and most fun murder party you’ve ever been invited to.
Sam Irby - Marie Claire
Braithwaite’s writing pulses with the fast, slick heartbeat of a YA thriller, cut through by a dry noir wit. That aridity is startling, a trait we might expect from someone older, more jaded.… But Braithwaite finds in young womanhood a reason to be bitter. At the center of these women’s lives is a knot of pain, and when it springs apart, it bloodies the world.
New Republic
(Starred review) [B]lazing…sharp as [a] knife…The reveal at the end isn’t so much a “gotcha” moment as the dawning of an inevitable, creeping feeling… expertly craft[ed] over the course of the novel. [B]itingly funny and brilliantly executed.
Publishers Weekly
Nigerian nurse Korede's younger sister Ayoola has a bad habit of killing her boyfriend.… A portrait of a dysfunctional family at its finest, this novel shows just how far one woman will go to keep her family safe, even if it costs her everything. —Elisabeth Clark, West Florida P.L., Pensacola
Library Journal
[D]ryly funny and wickedly crafty… psychological suspense.… Even your most extravagant speculations about what's really going on with these wildly contrasting yet oddly simpatico siblings will be trumped in this skillful, sardonic debut.
Kirkus Reviews