Book Recommendation: My Sweet Girl | Amanda Jayatissa

While they aren’t for everyone, I have always loved a well-written unlikable character, and the lead in Amanda Jayatissa’s debut novel My Sweet Girl is unlikable in the best way. Spoiled, disinterested in how others feel about her, impatient, and quick to anger, Paloma seems like someone that you wouldn’t want to read. And yet pretty quickly in this psychological thriller you see the other side to Paloma—the young girl in a very restrictive and underfunded Sri Lankan orphanage who just hopes for a family who cares for her.

Told in dual timelines between the present mystery and Paloma’s time at the orphanage, My Sweet Girl was an instant hit for me, and a completely engrossing psychological suspense novel with an absolutely jaw-dropper of an ending.

My Sweet Girl | Plot and Setting

In the present…

Paloma Evans is thirty years old and living in San Francisco. She feels abandoned by the only parents she has ever knows, the ones who adopted her from Sri Lanka so many years before. They’ve cut her off financially. Paloma drinks too much and has taken up a fairly racy side hustle to make money. She’s also taken on a roommate named Arjun who recently arrived from India.

Paloma also worries that she is being haunted by Mohini, a ghostly spirit that terrified her and the other girls at the Sri Lankan orphanage where she grew up. She’s certain that Mohini has found her in America and returned to scare her. Or maybe it’s the drinking…

In the past…

Paloma is a young girl living at Little Miracle Girls’ Home, an orphanage in Sri Lanka. The girls in the orphanage live under strict guidelines, and all hope to someday be adopted by a family who wants to care for them. This is just a dream for most girls though, who spend their days trying to do everything the administrators at the orphanage ask of them.

Paloma and her best friend Lahini love books, though. They try to stay away from the meaner girls who bully them at night, and are scared of Mohini, a spirit who one of the girls alleges haunts the orphanage. When a couple visits the orphanage, they connect with Paloma as she is reading one of the wife’s favorite books. They ask to adopt her, and Paloma is over the moon, though she is devastated knowing she must leave Lahini.

As the day of her departure nears, things become more tense at the orphanage for Paloma. She does her best to avoid the jealousy from the other girls, but the ghost Mohini may not let her leave… When the day finally comes, it is a relief to leave with the Evans for her new life.

In the present…

Paloma is enjoying feeling like she is helping another model minority find their way in America, until Arjun discovers a secret about Paloma and blackmails her. Before she can pay him off, Paloma arrives home one evening and finds Arjun murdered. She flees the scene, but when she returns with the police, the apartment is spotless. There’s no sign of Arjun, dead or alive. Does this have anything to do with the desperate actions she took many years ago to come to America for a better life?

My Sweet Girl | Review

This is a well-written and compelling psychological thriller that succeeds in hooking the reader despite Paloma’s challenging personality. One thing that helps is seeing her past storyline intermixed and understanding where she came from and what it took to get to America. Paloma is a girl who has been abandoned time and again, and it is easy to see why her parents cutting her off might trigger her. It is hard, after all, to be the model minority—doomed to a life where you are both an outsider and also expected to be perfect or face judgment in spades.

I absolutely was captivated by the past storyline at the orphanage, even more than I was by the alleged murder and disappearing body in present day. I did want to understand what was happening with Arjun, but it was clear that all would somehow tie back to how things unfold in Sri Lanka.

The ending is an absolutely banger, with a twist that left my jaw on the floor. Everything tied together in such a satisfying way, and I was particularly interested in Paloma as a character and how she found her identity in America after such a different upbringing. The author adds in the right amount of humor to allow Paloma to be somewhat crass in present day, but in a funny way. She is scrappy and a survivor, and nothing can take that away from her.

The ghostly presence of Mohini was on the periphery and was well-integrated into the story. It’s clear instantly that Paloma is somewhat unreliable in present day, particularly with her drinking. This made me question if she was manifesting Mohini or truly being haunted. I also felt that this wasn’t a huge part of the story, but a delicious contextual piece that rounded out the plot.

An absolutely outstanding debut novel and I already am excited to read Amanda Jayatissa’s next book.