Like A Sister

My April Book of the Month selection was Like A Sister by Kellye Garrett (the other options were The Good Left Undone by Adriana Trigiani, Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole by Susan Cain, and True Biz by Sara Novic). Once again, none of the selections really jumped out at me so I defaulted to the thriller and I ended up liking it more than I thought I would. Lena Scott is a graduate student at Columbia who could not be more different from her reality star half-sister Desiree Pierce. She has been estranged from her sister for the past two years because of her addictions and self-destructive behavior so, when Desiree's body is found at a playground near Lena's house in the Bronx, she feels tremendous guilt because she believes that Desiree was attempting to see her when she died. The police have ruled Desiree's death as an accidental overdose due to the heroin in her system but Lena knows that she would never shoot heroin because of her fear of needles. She is obsessed with finding out what really happened to her sister and begins trying to reconstruct her final days. Lena reaches out to her former reality show co-star, her new best friend, her on-again off-again boyfriend, and an old family friend who recently reentered her life. She must also reestablish contact with her father, the man who abandoned her and her mother when she was a child to start a new life with Desiree and her mother. All of these encounters lead to some uncomfortable truths about her sister and her family and they also put her life in danger. There are lots of twists and turns which kept me engaged with the murder mystery aspect of the narrative but I think I enjoyed the commentary on race, class, social media, and celebrity even more. Lena is an entertaining first-person narrator and I really appreciated her perspective on what it is like for a young Black woman to navigate life in today's society, particularly interactions with the police. Much of this novel is set in the world of hip-hop music (Lena and Desiree's father is a wealthy and influential music producer) and, while I did miss more than a few references, I found it to be fascinating. I especially enjoyed all of the scenes that take place backstage at various concerts because I have always wanted to know what really goes on before a performer takes the stage. I was also really intrigued by how social media is used to solve the mystery, especially posts on Instagram. It is a bit frightening how much someone can learn about you from your posts! I don't think I would have picked this novel if left to my own devices (one of the reasons why I like BOTM) but I really enjoyed it and would definitely recommend it to fans of thrillers.