REVIEW:

Welcome to the Sweet and Sour Cafe, located in the heart of Outlier Land! While reviews are just starting to come in for Amanda Jayatissa’s debut thriller, My Sweet Girl, anything less than a 5-star take on it is out of the norm. Why am I only at 3 stars then?

The Sweet

- The writing is brash, in-your-face, and unapologetic. Jayatissa has created a main character who’s first person perspective is unfiltered and fresh. You can tell from the very first sentence if it will work for you or not. “There’s a special place in hell for incompetent customer service agents, and it’s right between monsters who stick their bare feet up on airplane seats and mansplainers.”

- Chapters alternate between present-day San Francisco and Sri Lanka 20 years ago. I enjoyed learning a little about the latter location, since I don’t think I’ve read a book set there before.

- Jayatissa is from Sri Lanka herself, making this an #ownvoices story.

The Sour

- Paloma, the mc, is such an unreliable narrator that after awhile it was like listening to someone you know to be a habitual liar. What’s the point?

- Which lead me to getting a little bored and looking forward to getting to the ending.

- Which wrapped things up The Lamest Way Possible (see my Goodreads profile bio for definition/spoiler).

- Which revealed many twists, most that I had guessed.

- Which lead me to dreading and putting off writing this review, which is never a good sign.

But as I said, I’m the outlier, so read the praise for this novel before crossing it off your list! You just might find My Sweet Girl to be much sweeter than I did.

My thanks to Berkley Publishing Group for providing me with an advance copy to review. The expected US publication date is September 14th, 2021.

PUBLISHER SYNOPSIS:

Paloma thought her perfect life would begin once she was adopted and made it to America, but she’s about to find out that no matter how far you run, your past always catches up to you…

Ever since she was adopted from a Sri Lankan orphanage, Paloma has had the best of everything — schools, money, and parents so perfect that she fears she'll never live up to them.

Now at thirty years old and recently cut off from her parents’ funds, she decides to sublet the second bedroom of her overpriced San Francisco apartment to Arun, who recently moved from India. Paloma has to admit, it feels good helping someone find their way in America — that is until Arun discovers Paloma's darkest secret, one that could jeopardize her own fragile place in this country.

Before Paloma can pay Arun off, she finds him face down in a pool of blood. She flees the apartment but by the time the police arrive, there's no body—and no evidence that Arun ever even existed in the first place.

Paloma is terrified this is all somehow tangled up in the desperate actions she took to escape Sri Lanka so many years ago. Did Paloma’s secret die with Arun or is she now in greater danger than ever before?