I have checked out some of the books by Lola Akinmade. She lives in Stockholm, and she writes a blog. In December last year, she wrote the following on a post:
The nosy part of my really wants to know who she is talking about. So she’s saying that another popular book used 11 similar scenes and references as hers, and 3 same character names in comparable contexts. And the lead protagonist is based on her.
Now, what book is it? Since Lola Akinmade is based in Sweden, I naturally wondered if it’s another Swedish book? And she said it was a popular book. And that due diligence was done behind the scenes for close to a year. So if that’s the case, then possibly this book was published in early 2025 — or perhaps she first came across it in early 2025 and it was published earlier.
Well, I have no real leads, but just recently, I was reading a book called The Sisters by another Swedish author, Jonas Hassen Khemiri. I started to wonder if perhaps this is the book, or the author, that Akinmade is saying mined too much inspiration from her own books. Particularly because in Khemiri’s book, there’s three sisters whose lives are connected by one man, and in Akinmade’s first novel, there’s three women whose lives are also connected by one man. I read Akinmade’s first novel, In Every Mirror She’s Black, a few years ago (2021), but based on what I remember, I don’t think too many character names overlap. The three main women in Akinmade’s book were called Muna, Kemi, and Brittany, while in Khemiri’s book the three main women are Ina, Evelyn, and Anastasia. Also, the main man character in each book also had a different name, Johan versus Jonas.
So the main character names are different, but the idea of the three women/one man narrative still makes this a possibility.
After I finished reading The Sisters, I started reading Akinmade’s last book, Bitter Honey, and here, all of a sudden, lots of similarities started popping up! First, both these books have a half-African, half-Swedish prominent character called Jonas. Both books have a minor character called Klara. I think there were other same-name characters that I don’t remember. Both books have sons that practice holding their breaths. Both books have a Santa Lucia ceremony snippet scene. Both books take place in Sweden and the US. The Sisters also has scenes in Tunisia, and Bitter Honey has “off-camera” scenes in Gambia. Both books have characters struggling with drug addition. Both books are told from multiple perspectives, span decades, and do these time jumps where you keep having scenes out of chronological order. In both books, the main characters have absent fathers, and it plays a big role. Both of them have professors engaging in wholly inappropriate relationships with students. Sports play a role in each, basketball in one and soccer in the other. Both books have a main character who performs — spoken word poetry and singing in one book, and monologues and acting and speeches in the other.
So is that all a clue, or is it just coincidence? According to what I can find, The Sisters was actually first published in 2023, in Swedish, and then Bitter Honey was published in May-ish 2025, and then The Sisters was published in English also in spring or summerish, 2025. So that doesn’t support The Sisters being copied from Bitter Honey.
But you know what I was thinking? What if Akinmade felt, when The Sisters came out, that it was overly inspired by her first book, In Every Mirror She’s Black, even though I don’t remember character names being the same. So in retribution, she decided to get inspiration for Bitter Honey from The Sisters (a “let’s see how you like it” vibe). I don’t know, I’m just having fun speculating, and am incorrigibly nosy.
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