Welcome Back, Booklovers! It's Black Women's History Month and I started the month off reading a book by one of my favorite Black women authors. Being transparent I will say my opinion is biased because Kellye is one of my author friends and has been for years going back to Hollywood Homicide's original release. And I did interview her on here back in 2020. You can check that out here.
Like a Sister opens with Lena Scott finding out that her younger sister Desiree has died of an overdose and her body was found at a playground in the Bronx. She's having trouble making sense of it because even though they weren't close in recent years, she knows her sister. Desiree would never shoot heroin and she had no reason to be in that area. But no one wants to believe Lena and insist she doesn't know just how much her sister has changed and are quick to accept this as an accidental overdose do to her partying ways. So Lena takes it upon herself to investigate and uncovers some surprising secrets.
Kellye Garrett for me always does a great job at blending pop culture and humor into her mysteries. There are plenty of jokes throughout and there are characters I was able to guess the real life counterparts of. But the references never felt heavy-handed and the too dated. Their abundance fit because of the glitzy entertainment industry this takes place in.
Lena likes to think she's not a spoiled rich girl like her sister even though their father is a hip hop mogul because she didn't grow up with him. It's interesting to see her be forced to address her privilege as she comes across people from her sister's world who would do anything and everything to stay on top. She confronts feelings of jealous towards those who felt Desiree was like a sister. And at the same she has to navigate the address her issues with her father, Mel. The famed hip hop mogul has a barely there relationship with her and Lena does find herself wishing she was as close to him as Desiree was.
There were a lot of red herrings that threw me off from the mystery and I enjoyed the twists and turns. And New York was a character of it's own as Lena takes readers all around the city searching for clues.
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