Kin by Tayari Jones

Posted by Ms K on November 1, 2026 in All | Leave a comment

Readheads, rejoice. Tayari Jones has done it again.

If you loved An American Marriage like I did, you are in for a treat. Kin is a different novel but if you are expecting characters who get under your skin, complicated relationships and the sort of emotional sucker punch that causes you to stare at the ceiling for a while — congratulations. You are in the right place.

Kin introduces us to Annie and Vernice, two girls growing up together in Honeysuckle, Louisiana. They are ‘cradle friends’, born around the same time and bound together by something enormous: neither has a mother.

Jones delves into what makes someone your famil These two girls are as close as sisters and they know each other completely. Or at least they think they do.

Then life, as it tends to do, happens.

Annie goes looking for the mother who abandoned her. Vernice heads off to college and begins building a very different life for herself. They move through different worlds, meet different people, make choices the other doesn’t always understand — but somehow that original bond keeps pulling them back towards each other.

Jones doesn’t make their friendship tidy. There’s jealousy. There is judgement, secrets and disappointments. But that’s friendship and that sure is family.

Annie and Vernice’s lives take them through the American South of the 1950s and 60s, and the backdrop of racism, class and expectations for Black women a constant, shaping what they can and cannot do.

Basically, Readheads, this book is delicious. Huge feelings, big journeys, secrets, romance, wanting, class anxiety, family drama — and Jones lets all of it unfold without rushing to tell us what we’re supposed to think.

And that ending.

I am saying nothing.

You will have to read it yourself.

Kin left me thinking about the people we choose to call family as well as those who are our family. The people who knew us before we became who we become. Who are you when you’re with the person who remembers everything about you?

I really loved this one. I hope you do too.

But that is just my two cents worth.