Reading Skywards – Your Friendly Bookshelf

INFORMATION ABOUT THIS BOOK
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Doubleday
Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 5, 2025
Format:  Hardcover,  audiobook, and ebook
Print length ‏ : ‎ 384 pages
Genre:  Literary Fiction, Magical Realism

MY PERSONAL OPINION OF “CURSED DAUGTHERS”

I loved each character, with their flaws and their strengths, and really enjoyed how the three generations of women interacted with each other, where respect was the most important. I liked the way Lagos was described throughout the novel, and the author made several Nigerian cultural references that I enjoyed. I felt that each main character, Monife, Ebun, and Eniiyi, brought importance to the story. Their stories matter, and it was wonderfully written till the end. The end was perfect.

Oh, what a book. From beginning to end was superb.

PREMISE OF THE BOOK AS FOUND IN AMAZON / GOODREADS:

When Ebun gives birth to her daughter, Eniiyi, on the day they bury her cousin Monife, there is no denying the startling resemblance between the child and the dead woman. So begins the belief, fostered and fanned by the entire family, that Eniiyi is the actual reincarnation of Monife, fated to follow in her footsteps in all ways, including that tragic end.

There is also the matter of the family curse: “No man will call your house his home. And if they try, they will not have peace…” which has been handed down from generation to generation, breaking hearts and causing three generations of abandoned Falodun women to live under the same roof. 

When Eniiyi falls in love with the handsome boy she saves from drowning, she can no longer run from her family’s history. As several women in her family have done before, she ill-advisedly seeks answers in older, darker spiritual corners of Lagos, demanding solutions. Is she destined to live out the habitual story of love and heartbreak? Or can she break the pattern once and for all, not only avoiding the spiral that led Monife to her lonely death, but liberating herself from all the family secrets and unspoken traumas that have dogged her steps since before she could remember?

MY RATING: 4.6

QUOTES FROM THE BOOK

“No man will call your house his home. And if they try, they will not have peace…”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Oyinkan Braithwaite is the best-selling author of MY SISTER THE SERIAL KILLER (2018) which has now been translated into 30 languages and sold millions of copies. It won the 2019 LA Times Award for Best Crime Thriller, the 2019 Morning News Tournament of Books, the 2019 Amazon Publishing Reader’s Award for Best Debut Novel and the 2019 Anthony Award for Best First Novel. It was also shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019, among several other prizes, and longlisted for both the Booker Prize 2019 and the 2020 Dublin Literary Award. Oyinkan has published several short stories over the last few years for a variety of publications and platforms, including Audible and McSweeney’s. She also wrote a novella The Baby is Mine in support of adult literacy. Alongside her work as a novelist, she is also a screenwriter with two projects in development for television and one for feature film, the latter an adaptation of her first novel. Her new novel Cursed Daughters will be published in Autumn 2025..

Bibliography:

• My Sister the Serial Killer