Like A Sister by Kellye Garrett (2022) After finishing this twist-packed but somewhat tedious thriller, we're swearing off any more books centered around social media reality tweeting instagramming influencers......
And that's coming from a reader who normally grabs every new thriller-mystery that hits the market.
Why? Because anyone with more than 3 working brain cells knows these social media, self aggrandizing twits are soulless morons whose desperate need for attention and adulation knows no bounds.....
Since we assume the authors of social media thrillers usually possess more than 3 working brain cells, that would explains why their books rain down all sorts of mystery, misery and death upon their 'famous-for-being-famous' non-entity characters.
As the 'Cellblock Tango' number in 'Chicago' goes......'they had it comin'.
"Like A Sister" dives right into the reality maelstrom with the untimely drug-related death of young, beautiful black celebutante Desiree Pierce, a recently disgraced reality-TV star. Why was the 25 year old Desiree found fatally overdosed in a Bronx playground in the middle of the night?
Was she trying to contact her estranged half-sister Lena Scott, a graduate student leading a quiet low profile life as a student at Columbia University? The only thing the disparate sisters had in common was their mutual estrangement from their all powerful, intimidating father Mel 'Murder Mel' Pierce a fabulously successful Hip Hop record tycoon.
Lena knows something's fishy about her sister's death, Not believing the overdose story, she launches her own amateur investigation, discovering ominous and suspicious links to a DUI car accident her sister managed to skate past before her......murder?
We'll be blunt - the pacing in the book's first half drags terribly, but author Garrett manages to enliven the story with her very sardonic on-target wit. ("his pause lasted longer than my last Netflix binge" ) Lena's probe into her sister's many secrets takes her through a host of unusual suspects who orbited around Desiree. And they're a rogue's gallery of NYC celebs, hangers-on, young hard-partying playgirls, superstars and bottom feeders, all hungering for their 15 minutes.
Thankfully, the book casts a withering eye on this preening bunch, which kept us turning pages through those plodding chapters. We continued to hang in there awaiting what all thriller authors know they must deliver in plentiful quantities as they move into the climax.......the twists.
The twists and red herrings do finally start arriving, one on top of the other......but by the time Lena inevitably finds herself at the mercy of the book's principal villain, this particular individual's motives and methods seem abrupt murky and poorly explained.
Overall effect of "Like A Sister" - mildly entertaining, and suspense-thriller completists will want to give it a read. But far, far from top-drawer. 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2) And if it's another 10 years before we come across another book about mock celebs and their social media lives......fine with us.
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