I genuinely don’t think I’ve ever been entranced by a book like this. I’ve read tons of beautifully written and crafted novels in my time but nothing quite like this. There are so many complex ideas and metaphors that all make sense whilst also making sure you’re never 100% sure what’s going on and I loved it. Everything about this book is incredible, whether I understand the ending or not. ( )

I have to admit, it took me a minute to understand what was happening, but once I got into it, I couldn't stop reading it. ( )

3.75. This novel is reaching for so much and playing with such interesting stuff. It is immersive and vivid and sometimes genuinely cracked open the ontological framework my brain spends most of its time in in really interesting ways. I have some qualms about its success as a novel, as that specific kind of storytelling, that unit of art. To be fair, that is definitely one of the things Emezi deliberately deprioritized--I'm just not sure it's quite for me. I liked this a lot but wanted to like it more, maybe. ( )

Note: Overdrive e-book version omits a bunch of non-Latin letters if you don't let it set its own font. I learned this with [b:My Sister, the Serial Killer|38819868|My Sister, the Serial Killer|Oyinkan Braithwaite|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1523366732l/38819868._SY75_.jpg|60394238] and then promptly forgot, only remembering after I finished. Goddamnit.

3.5*, rounded up because I'm feeling generous today, but it really could go either way.

In the broad strokes I liked this---both a quick, engaging read and made some really interesting artistic choices. I'm less certain all those choices were successful. The most obvious one is use of foreshadowing: Emezi leans hard on "X had no way of knowing how big a mistake that would turn out to be!" in order to whip up an atmosphere of foreboding, perilousness, and tragedy. It gets noticeably repetitive, and sometimes the promised comeuppance doesn't actually happen (e.g. the story of the python in the bathroom...?). It also weirdly flattens some of the big emotional moments in Ada's life, where you already know a lot about what's going to happen (e.g. the end of Ada's marriage) by the time it actually happens, and then Emezi has to dribble in new details to actually make the pain/despair of the moment felt. (Vague spoilers: The student loans thing really got me. It's a concrete manifestation of the destruction and devastation on everyone in the blast radius that we're otherwise told about more distantly---say, breaking the older brother's heart. The loans are a distant way to put it, too, just more concrete than breaking boys' hearts. ...and around and around I go!)

I think one could make an argument for heavy foreshadowing as an intentional stylistic choice, since the story's being told by a chorus of narrators/heavily influenced by oral storytelling and folktales, but... IDK, you know? Bouncing around temporally this way took some of the sting out of the most brutal moments (there are a lot and they are quite explicit, just FYI), and I'm not sure if it was supposed to do that or no. ( )

A tough 4.5 stars. Only .5 less because of how it was like just an iota hard to get into in the beginning and some parts were sufficiently triggering. But overall I loved it ( )