Korede is nothing if not efficient. Her sister Ayoola throws problems at her feet, and Korede solves them. Quickly, quietly, smoothly. She loves Ayoola, even though most of the problems she’s been thrown recently have been the bodies of Ayoola’s boyfriends. All killed in self-defense, of course. Ayoola would never do something so awful on purpose. She’s too beautiful, too glamourous, too young to do such a thing.
At Korede’s day job as a nurse, she’s just as efficient. She finishes all her work in time to spill her heart to the patient in a coma, and try to get the cute Dr. Otumu to notice her as more than a great nurse and good friend.
Her worlds collide when Ayoola shows up unannounced at the hospital to go to lunch with Korede, but ends up walking away with Dr. Otumu’s attention. Korede must decide how far she is willing to go to cover up for her sister, and what’s going to happen when something inevitably goes even more wrong.
I picked this up a few months ago from an independent bookstore in Dover, Delaware, https://www.artbytaino.com/shop . It’s tiny and highly curated and very cute! He’s an artist, so he’s got some cool pieces for sale too.
The writing itself is incredible. So blunt and so evocative. The quote on the front from The New York Times calls it “scorpion-tailed,” which is way more accurate than anything I could come up with.
I love books that seem like a dream as you’re reading them. This one feels more like one of those nightmares where you’ve killed someone and you have to evade the police, but it’s really stressful and you’d rather just give up and go to jail, but for some reason you just keep going. (Everyone gets those dreams, right? Not just me?)
Without spoiling anything, I’m still trying to decide how I feel about the ending. Most of me buys into the resolution, but a little part of me is thinking “I am clearly missing the true moral.” I’ll be thinking about it for a while.