I couldn't get through this title. It ended up not being for me, but I hope it finds a hope with other readers.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Such a wonderful read!

I received a review copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley for my honest review. The opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an electronic copy to read in exchange for an honest review.

Oh this was a heartbreaker - but so worth it. There is nothing happy in this book, but it is still one of the best books I have ever read. Through multiple points of view, we follow Lala and her family as she navigates trauma, life, and love.

Lyrical, sad, and desperate. Everything I love in literary fiction. Jones handled themes of generational trauma and mother-daughter relationships with so much grace and finesse...I will be looking out for future books from her for sure!

It’s so hard to rate a book like How the One Armed Sister Sweeps Her House. I found this book to be a beautiful book but such a painful and heartbreaking story. I was reminded of a more modern-day Their Eyes We’re Watching God.

I’m not a big fan of historical or literary fiction. I much prefer contemporary lit, romance, thrillers, etc. but this book was certainly worth the read. Just be aware that there are a lot of traumatic events in this book and many triggers throughout the story. It’s super heavy and hard to read most of the time.

If you really enjoy literary fiction and plot lines of traumatized women and the things they overcome, you’ll enjoy this one.

I tried and tried to read this book, but I just couldn't get into it. I am posting a do not finish for now, but am going to try again in the future. If I finish it later down the line, I will edit my review.

I don’t think this was the right time for me to read this story. Seeped in never ending violence, I found myself taking so long to finish. With the turbulent year we’ve all lived through, I wasn’t able to finish. I need something lighter lately it seems.

I really like that more and more books today have a diverse set of characters. This book took place in Barbados and on Goodreads is described as being a mix between Zadie Jones and Marlon James. I couldn't agree more! I loved this story and I loved it even more because of its diversity. I will certainly read more from Cherie Jones in the future.

When a debut novel is this strong, you know you’ve found a writer you’ll continue to read for the rest of their career!

Set in a small beach town in Barbados, a melting pot of wealthy expats and the local community that mostly work in service roles, the characters that this novel alternates between allow this really nuanced discussion of class and privilege to be drawn out. I think the blurb gives a little too much of the plot away, but needless to say it is one heavy in trauma for each character—they are each struggling with violences and grief of sorts, the intergenerational aspect of which was particularly well layered in the multiple timelines the narrative gets told through. The way rape manifests in the narrative, the sexual violences more broadly, was incredibly effective at distilling commentary on class (but oof was it a lot to read!). There was a claustrophobia to the writing that inhabited the sense of being trapped that these characters were facing. How much their own trauma informed the way they went on to perpetuate and internalise this, and their constant struggle against that. It felt breathless in its lack of levity, which made for a fast-paced read, but one you’ll want to be in the right frame of mind to read.

This is an incredibly striking read, and I’m looking forward to @readsoullit bookclub this weekend to discuss more!

“You understand that if you must learn to love a man, he is probably not the man you should be loving.”

This debut novel is powerful, stunning and compelling. Content warning includes murder, sexual abuse, death of an infant, and domestic abuse. Lala is 18-year-old woman who beads tourists' hair on the beach. Lala is married and has become pregnant by a handsome and abusive thief named Adan. They kill a British tourist on the evening of his daughter's premature birth in a botched robbery. The story focuses on the aftermath of their daughter's traumatic birth and accidental death amidst the dual investigation of both events. Adan's behavior spirals out of control after theirs daughter's accidental death.

How the One Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones was a great read. I featured it as Book of the Day on all my social media platforms, and I’ll include it in my monthly roundup of news releases for my Black Fiction Addiction blog.

How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House, is a book that will leave its mark on you, long after you close the book. It's a haunting tale that illuminates the poverty and violent trauma experienced by island locals, while tourists enjoy the beautiful bountiful beaches.

It starts with a cautionary tale, a murder and death of a baby. We meet Lala who leaves her grandmother's house to marry Adan, a petty criminal and an abuser, by whose hands, she suffers many debilitating blows. But the trauma neither starts nor ends with Adan, it's the recurring theme of the book.

While this is certainly an important book that many people might enjoy, I couldn't love it because it was a truly heavy story that needed a trigger warning. Also, at times the voices were confusing as the author switched perspectives and timelines. I would still recommend it but be warned that the characters suffer through domestic abuse, rapes, and a lot of violence. While it takes place on a beautiful beach in Barbados, it is not a pretty tale.

How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps her House is the type of novel you finish and then return to Chapter One to begin again. Because it is that good, but also because it is filled with nuance, subtlety, and rich relationships between characters, the depths of which unfold gradually.

The wonderful title refers to a cautionary parable told to Lala, the primary character, by her grandmother in the opening pages. She warns there were two sisters, one obedient and one naughty who couldn’t quell her curiosity to explore the infamous tunnels of Baxter Bay, Barbados. The grandmother recounts, “This sister question her mother, wonder what in the tunnels that so sweet she warning her away from it, because this good-for-nothing girl already developing a taste for things that her mother tell her not to have, this slack-from-she-born, force-rip sister already thinking that some bad things real sweet it can’t be evil. This sister thinking to herself, It not that dark, it not that spooky, what is the use of a tunnel if you don’t get to see where it lead?”

By opening her novel with this warning, Cherie Jones casts a foreboding veil over the rest of the book. Her use of language is consistent with that sentiment, rhythmic and poetic, carrying a tone of impending tragedy. Set in Barbados in the mid 1980s, the plot is heartbreaking although fairly straightforward. A poor young woman goes into premature labor, alone and afraid; a wealthy white family is robbed and the father murdered; a baby girl is born and also dies. There are investigations, grief, and cover ups, but this novel’s real accomplishment is the weaving of characters’ backstories, evoking a sense of inevitability and compassion even for the so-called villains.

Alongside the narrative of Lala and her husband Adan, Jones details the lives of Peter Whalen, the wealthy tourist who was murdered, and his widow Mira. The Whalens had traveled to Baxter’s Beach for many years and were, on this particular trip, attempting to rescue their marriage. Peter is killed while protecting Mira from the robber, leaving her with not only extreme guilt, but the job of consoling Peter’s children, dealing with the investigation, collecting the body, and fielding condolence calls from friends and relatives including her mother in London.

It is in Mira’s characterization of her mother that a key message of the novel is conveyed: “Extremes of anything are bad, and the two extremes of possession—deprivation and deluge—are especially crippling to the soul. For that reason, Mira Whalen’s mother has always advocated having just enough. Enough to keep you happy. Enough to eat. Enough to drink. No more or no less.” In this novel with prominent themes of class difference, extreme poverty, and lives of crime, Jones makes a profound statement, writing, “There is perhaps enough diversion in seeking to ascertain what enough is to last a lifetime.”

Along with Lala and Mira, each major character (and some minor characters as well) has chapters written in their point of view. Some of the most sublime are ones Jones writes in a haunting, second-person point of view, giving them an aura of Lala’s internal strength-summoning, and possibly phantom guidance offered by her deceased mother, Esme:

“If you is woman enough to call your own taxi from the hospital and tell it where to go, you tell yourself now, if you can mince out of that taxi with your stitched up parts still stinging and you can pay the taximan and you can cross the sandy soil with two bags and five pounds of baby in a pink dress you buy her with money you make from the same braiding, if you can get up the same twenty-five steps you mince down that night you went to find him, with two bags and a new baby, ain’t you woman enough to decide when you will take that baby and go back to doing heads?”

Later in the novel when the question of how one learns to love a man is posed, Lala eventually recognizes “that if you must learn to love a man, he is probably not the man you should be loving.” Although the novel portrays generations of abuse, eventually landing at the feet of Lala and Adan and informing the way they relate to each other, it also paints a picture of a good, loyal man who will become Lala’s protector. Lala knows love with this man named Tone, who had been her first love as a girl, quite ironically, in those forbidden tunnels. The knowledge that such love does exist is Lala’s salvation. Jones writes, “This knowledge, you tell yourself, and not the hands and the tongue and thighs of Tone beneath you, on the ground in these tunnels, is why you are singing. This truth that only the girls who dare to enter the tunnels are able to find out.”

Review // How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones

❓Literary Fiction

💗 Dark, Emotional, Medium-Paced

📖 Lala must deal with a chain of events that have terrible consequences when her petty criminal husband is interrupted in his attempt to rob one of the mansions in their "paradise" home of Baxter Beach, Barbados.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

"You understand that if you must learn to love a man, he is probably not the man you should be loving."

If you've ever sipped tropical drinks on a Caribbean beach and wondered what it was like to live in Paradise - this one's for you.

Only, paradise is often a mirage.

How the One Armed Sister Sweeps Her House is about the underbelly of paradise. In a resort town in Barbados, Lala and her husband Adan are struggling. There's a barrier between locals and tourists, created by race, class and generational trauma. The rift is glaring, and ultimately made me rethink tropical vacations and the morality of mega-hotels as a whole.

The atmosphere was thick. I could feel my feet in the sand and smell the ocean air. Jones' character building was just as strong - every one of these players felt real, fully-formed and intricate. While some characters seemed downright evil, their backstories were slowly unwrapped to reveal a layer of complexity that I didn't expect.

The book did at times feel like trauma porn - how can we tear one woman down, bit by bit, until there's nothing left? It was often hard to read, and needless to say, there were content warnings galore. Violence, abuse, drug addiction, crime, poverty, death and grief. It was incredibly sad.

Just when it felt like all hope was lost, there was a glimmer. Not for all of the characters in this messy, interwoven tale, but for a select few. While the ending did feel somewhat tidy, I needed it. I let out a sigh of relief after holding my breath for what felt like all 288 pages.

This is an important novel on a global scale. Just be prepared for the unending misery. I fully understand and appreciate the brilliance here, I just had a hard time actually enjoying it.

Read If You Like -
✨ Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson
✨ Character-Driven Stories
✨ Literary Thrillers

I don’t know Barbados quite the way that I should.

I was born and raised in Canada, so why would this bother me?

Both of my parents are from the Caribbean. I’m half Bajan. I’ve spent my life in North America, and yet, I’ve only actually been there a handful of times.

Over the past few years, I’ve caught glimpses of Barbados via social media. The images that people share are gorgeous. Yet something about looking at tourists’ photos leaves me with a deep sense of longing. There’s a real life beyond those fabulous filters.

People love to refer to countries like as Barbados as “paradise”. But just as it can be dangerous to judge a book by its cover, so it is unwise to judge a country by its reputation. Too often, people take locations that they think of as vacation destinations for granted. On one hand, I realize their perspective comes naturally. I imagine it’s easy to come to certain conclusions if the only time you visit a place is when you’re there to relax.

On the other, I’ve been concerned. Visitors risk overlooking the fact that real people are born, live out their lives, and even die in places that they tag as “travel goals”. The fact remains that in these desired destinations, real people face real struggles.

Never was this more apparent in How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House—a debut novel that is set in the country of my father’s birth.

I’ve seen One-Armed Sister compared to White Teeth, by Zadie Smith. Dare I say that this comparison is well-deserved? Both are vividly-written debut novels that take their readers for a ride. Both are written by Black women, and are bound to be remembered by all who read them—if not in detail, then certainly in terms of their emotional impact. One-Armed Sister carries readers on a journey via an engrossing story that involves multiple characters whose lives intersect, overlap, and at times painfully collide.

The world of One-Armed Sister is full of high-stakes human interactions. In that sense, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House is, undeniably, a character-driven thriller. At its core is an abusive relationship between a couple: Adan and Lala.

This novel is, indeed, compelling—almost beyond reason. Reading it is often an intense experience. I have no doubt that most readers will be transfixed by its characters. You will care for their welfare. You will likely wonder if it makes any sense to be this concerned about people who only exist in print—then remind yourself that when you come across truly good fiction, this is normal.

Ms. Jones ability to wield words is enchanting. In her characters’ parlance I could feel the echoes of my relatives. Reader Beware: Due to the nature of her story, her carefully crafted sentences are often full of foreboding. On nearly every page, I found myself feeling a sense of curiosity mingled with dread over what new fate would befall a beloved character. Yet it was all worth it.

Overall One-Armed Sister is a great, engrossing read. I look forward to finding out what’s next for Ms. Jones.

I really enjoyed this one. There were a few spots I got a little confused, but that was just probably me.

Overall, I loved the story, characters, and writing.

I really enjoyed this very face paced story set in a fictional beachside town in Barbados. The characters are rich with detail and draw you into their somewhat chaotic lives and keep your attention until the very end.

I caught on to the underlying themes within the story, The main theme seemed to be generational trauma and how that is passed along throughout families. Other themes that are explored in this story are classism and colorism. The contrast in the main women characters, who are both Bajan, are rooted in their social standing and how they present themselves to the world.

The author gives very insightful writing into this world and into these characters and although there were some parts that were hard to read, you want to push on to know where she is taking you. She ties up all of the characters neatly at the end, yet the story still lingers in your mind upon ending.

I enjoyed this book. It is not a light read as there is such heavy content but the execution by the author is thoughtful and well-done.

I enjoyed and recommend it.

First of all, I’ll go in by saying that How The One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House comes with a list of trigger warnings that friends who read before me warned me of, but don’t let that keep you from reading.

I was gifted the audiobook ALC from Libro.fm and I really enjoyed the narrator because I felt the story come alive even more so. From the Barbados setting to the emotion that ran high throughout the plot.

There were so many sections of trauma and violence, but the story also wove such a beautiful theme of hope through it all as Lala navigates life from the challenging situations she is dealt.

*many thanks to Puplisher, Libro.fm and Netgalley for the gifted audiobook

This is a lovely yet unsettling book about interconnected families and their trauma-filled lives. It starts with a robbery gone wrong, a murder, and an infant's unfortunate death. Things escalate from there as we meet Lala, her thieving husband, Adan, Tone, who loves Lala but can't always protect her from violence. We go back and forth in time to discover their roots and how they have come to protect their loved ones as much as they can given their histories. I felt a range of emotions reading this novel as it transcends class and race to tell a bittersweet story of characters struggling to survive. I'm sure we will hear more from Cherie Jones!

Hopped on the pogo stick, oh yeah….

This one has me hoppin’, I’ll tell you that. From my chair, I went to Barbados and got involved with some locals who grabbed me and held me hostage for a few days. There are several compelling tales going at once, but it’s the story of a woman named Lala that kept me most riled up. Well, okay, these down-and-outers didn’t MAKE me read their tragic stories, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of them. I simply couldn’t put this book down!

First of all, did anyone say atmosphere? The pictures the author paints are vivid—I felt my toes in the sand, I heard the ocean waves, I saw the local women braiding tourists’ hair on the beach. I’m a sucker for exotic locales anyway. I can’t stress enough how atmospheric it is—and the author achieves this without writing long, descriptive clumps. She just weaves in the visuals, oh so skillfully.

And the language, oh the language! It slayed me! Colorful, jazzy, plaintiff, twisty. So alive! I get all wound up—well, sort of manic, actually—when words are stuck together so beautifully. I’d reread paragraphs just for fun. There is some dialect, and it adds to the story, in my opinion. Often dialect is too hard for me to understand, but not here. It has such rhythm, it enhances the music.

I will say that the story is very depressing; all the relationships are disasters and there’s a fair amount of violence. There’s lots of abuse by men (so if you get triggered when reading about abuse, you’ll probably want to avoid this one.) All of this makes for an intense read. Despite the unending tragedy, though, I found the book utterly seductive.

As usual, I don’t want to give anything away. It’s best to go into it blind, like I did (because then the wallops are bigger and better). It’s an emotional read. Lala’s life is so hard, so tragic, it will get under your skin. There are others with super sad stories, too. Besides the abuse, there’s murder, burglary, a newborn, drug deals, hookers, an evil guy, a detective, a sad grandma, rich tourists. There’s plenty of suspense, which made it hard to put the book down. Each chapter is told from the point of view of one of the characters. There’s a little jumping around, but it’s never confusing.

Right after I started reading, I was so stunned by the book’s brilliance that I had to stop and check out this book, this author. I cannot believe this is a debut, I cannot! Come to find out, the author, Jones, is a lawyer by day. This does not compute! How can she be so logical in the day and so imaginative at night? And get this: the way she creates characters is that they talk to her in her head! In one interview, Jones talks about how she started creating a character when she was on a bus and a person was talking to her. The interviewer assumed that Jones used the person’s story to form the character. Oh no, there was not a real person talking to her on the bus—the person was in her head! Such a cool way to write! And meanwhile, this writer seems grounded and self-assured—not someone who hears voices. I’ve never heard of a writer getting talked to by a character, but maybe it’s common for all I know.

The weird title makes sense after you read the first chapter. And yes, the title is insanely long, but you have to admit it grabs you. I love it (though it’s really annoying when you’re trying to put it in a list!). And the cover—such rich colors! Makes me want to hold the book in my hands forever so I can look down at the eye candy any time I want. I wish the title was lowercase and smaller, but still, I love it.

This is a book that will stay with me. It’s just brilliant. Ha, at first I thought this one was a secret gem; I was all ready to be an unpaid marketer who pushes this book out there for all to see. I wanted to share the love! But then I found out it was a Good Morning America book club selection. What? Who knew GMA had a book club? I’m glad the book is getting lots of press; it deserves it.

In an interview, the author said she is working on another novel, but in the meantime she’s writing some flash fiction. I’m in line for whatever comes out of her pen, I guarantee you.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy.