February 6, 2026

Had Me Then Lost Me — Which Is Its Own Kind of Annoying

My Sister, the Serial Killer

by Oyinkan Braithwaite

Author  Oyinkan Braithwaite   
Publisher  Doubleday   
Year  2018   
Pages  226
Genre  Dark Comedy · Mystery Thriller
Themes  Sisterhood · Loyalty · Complicity · Nigerian setting · Women protecting each other

Korede’s beautiful sister Ayoola has a habit of killing her boyfriends. Korede keeps cleaning up the messes. When Ayoola sets her sights on the doctor Korede secretly loves, she has to decide how far she’s actually willing to go to protect someone who keeps making her life harder.

“Ayoola summons me with these words — I have killed him.”

What It Actually Felt Like

The premise is right there in the title and the first half earns it. The dark humor is sharp, the sibling dynamic has real teeth, and Braithwaite is clearly saying something pointed about the ways women are socialized to protect everyone around them even when those people don’t deserve it.

And then the second half just stops. The momentum disappears and I sat there at the end waiting for something to actually happen, and it didn’t. The setup was so good that the non-payoff was genuinely frustrating.

The Honest Part

The concept is significantly stronger than the execution. It’s a quick read so the time investment is low, but I left wanting a lot more from it than it gave.

Who This Is For

Readers who love dark comedy and complicated sibling dynamics. Just go in with measured expectations for the back half.

⭐⭐  Great start, ran out of story.

Tags  dark comedy, mystery thriller, Nigerian fiction, mood: uneven

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