A review by bisexualbookshelf
Sister Snake by Amanda Lee Koe

adventurous funny tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Amanda Lee Koe’s Sister Snake is a sharp-fanged, lyrical retelling of “The Legend of the White Snake” that slithers between myth and modernity, immortality and the mundane. With thrumming prose, Koe unspools the tale of Emerald and Su, two snake sisters who have shed their scales for human skin—but not their hunger.

Emerald, the green snake, is a restless sugar baby navigating the neon-lit corridors of New York’s Upper East Side. Jaded, immortal, and unapologetically feral, she siphons qi from her wealthy clients, feeding off their life force in a way that makes capitalism feel almost honest. Her sister Su, the white snake, has spent the last decade in Singapore, subsuming herself into human life with Botox and marriage to Paul, a powerful politician. Su has renounced her immortal self, believing civilization to be a salve, while Emerald scoffs at the idea that humanity is anything but a fragile masquerade. “Assimilate all you want,” Emerald tells her, “but don’t pass your self-loathing off to me.”

The tension between the sisters is as hypnotic as it is heartbreaking. Su’s desire for stability is haunted by past trauma—a violent assault by male snakes that first brought the sisters together—while Emerald’s rejection of human norms is less reckless than it seems. The novel hums with a desperate yearning: for safety, for connection, for something real in a world of artifice. When Su discovers a video of Emerald, in snake form, being shot by police in Central Park, she boards a plane to New York without hesitation. What follows is a reunion laced with betrayal, murder, and the reawakening of long-buried instincts.

Koe’s storytelling is mesmeric, weaving visceral imagery with biting humor. She writes with the sharpness of a fang sinking into flesh, making every line pulse with urgency or dark humor. The novel wrestles with identity and transformation, asking: How much of ourselves can we abandon before we become unrecognizable? Is survival worth the cost of erasure? Su’s carefully constructed human life begins to unravel, especially when she discovers she is pregnant and fears the child will be born a snake. Her decision to terminate the pregnancy is complicated by a primal, unexpected protectiveness, and as the sisters return to Singapore, the boundaries between past and present, self and other, human and beast blur beyond recognition.

Like Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder, Sister Snake is a feral, feminist meditation on the wildness that civilization tries to tame. Koe unflinchingly critiques conformity, particularly within the rigid expectations placed on women. Su and Emerald are bound not just by blood but by the shared burden of navigating a world that demands their submission. But where Su seeks invisibility, Emerald demands to be seen, sharp teeth and all. Their love is bruising and relentless, shifting between tenderness and violence, much like the ever-changing nature of identity itself.

For readers who revel in lush prose, mythic reinvention, and stories of women who refuse to be caged, Sister Snake is a must-read. It coils around you, tight and unrelenting, until you feel its stinging bite.

📖 Recommended For: Fans of mythic retellings and feminist speculative fiction; readers drawn to themes of transformation, sisterhood, and rebellion; lovers of Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder or Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado.

🔑 Key Themes: Identity and Assimilation, Primal Instincts vs. Civilization, Sisterhood and Betrayal, Power and Survival.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings