The Bookish Mindset

Overview:

Title: Kin
Author: Tayari Jones
Published: March 2026
Genre: Literary
Themes: Family, Relationships

One sentence summary: Two motherless girls, raised side by side until their lives take them in different directions.

One sentence review: An unforgettable tale of sisterhood.

Review:

Vernice and Annie have known each other all their lives. Both motherless, they’re siblings in every sense of the word. Raised side by side, they’re inseparable until their roads start to divert and their paths couldn’t be more different.

Kin is my first experience of Jones’s writing and it won’t be my last. This was beautifully written and had me flying through the pages. It was smooth and syrupy and while the pace wasn’t quick, I found myself reading large chunks at a time, one you can settle into really easily.

Vernice and Annie’s relationship is a joy to read, their bond is beyond friendship and I felt for them deeply. The multiple POV works perfectly here as we see how much the women have grown and changed from their younger time to together and how the intersection of class and education try to separate them. Set against the time of Jim Crow laws, they face hardship and more but they have each other despite the distances their lives take them.

I’ve seen a few clips of her interviews with the importance of letter writing and how it’s being loss as a form so she’ll keep including it in her work. The letters are peppered throughout and work beautifully to tie the story together.

“Love required so much betrayal. Sometimes of myself. Oftentimes, everyone with a heart ended up devastated.”

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And don’t forget to check out my other blogs and reviews – you can find books with similar themes in the same folder link below, or click back onto blogs to see the whole offering.

Last updated 10/05/2026