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A Novel
by Tayari Jones
Book Reviewed by:A magnificent new novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of An American Marriage—Tayari Jones has written an unforgettable novel that sparkles with wit and intelligence and deep feeling about two lifelong friends whose worlds converge after many years apart in the face of a devastating tragedy.
Vernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, have been best friends and neighbors since earliest childhood but are fated to live starkly different lives. Raised by a fierce aunt determined to give her a stable home in the wake of her mother's death, Vernice leaves Honeysuckle at eighteen for Spelman College, where she joins a sisterhood of powerfully connected Black women and discovers a world of affluence, manners, aspiration, and inequality. Annie, abandoned by her mother as a child and fixated on the idea of finding her and filling the bottomless hole left by her absence, sets off on a journey that will take her into a world of peril and adversity, as well as love and adventure, culminating in a battle for her life.
A novel about mothers and daughters, friendship and sisterhood, and the complexities of being a woman in the American South, Kin is an exuberant, emotionally rich, unforgettable work from one of the brightest and most irresistible voices in contemporary fiction.
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (5/14/2026)
Finished Kin by Tayari Jones for my book club. Plan to use Book Browse suggested questions to facilitate our discussion. I also read Fire Sword and Sea by Vanessa Riley. Gave me...
-Marilyn_M
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (4/30/2026)
...sguised third-person autobiography and, well, it was pretty amateurish. I also read https://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/5176/kin Kin by Tayari Jones for a book discussion today. I liked it OK - thought it was a five-star read - but I was surprised it didn't wow me. After all the superlatives other...
-kim.kovacs
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (4/23/2026)
...ill Wisoff, and I Live You Forever by Meredeth Rutter Marple. Plus I've got to read https://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/5176/kin Kin by Tayari Jones for a book group. (Yeah, no wilderness adventures for me this week! My hubby is starting to feel neglected. :winking_face_with_tongue: ) I'm obviousl...
-kim.kovacs
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (3/26/2026)
This morning I finished my first audiobook, Kin by Tayari Jones, which is a heartwarming story of two motherless girls who endure a lifelong friendship through the challenges they face. I enjoyed hearing the story...
-Lynne_G
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (3/19/2026)
I finished Kin by Tayari Jones. It was a good story, but I liked An American Marriage by her even more. I'm going to start off this coming week with The Martha's Vineyard Beach and...
-Holly_K
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (3/12/2026)
I'm reading Kin by Tayari Jones. Not even halfway through so I'm not commenting yet. An American Marriage by her was one of my favorites.
-Holly_K
The novel's late-1950s to early-1960s setting coincides with the height of the Civil Rights movement. Vernice's bus incident echoes Rosa Parks's, and at Spelman she meets various young people who take part in protests. Joette's cousin, Marylinda, is a key organizer. Marylinda can pass as white and comes from a wealthy family, so she has more privilege than average. Joette comes from a mortuary fortune and has maids. Her parents encourage her engagement with a business associate. Vernice, too, will move up in Atlanta society through a marriage to Franklin McHenry. Through Vernice and her new acquaintances, readers get a window onto a rising Black bourgeoisie. Annie's experience of class is very different. Questions surrounding being mothered and mothering are central to the novel. Jones carefully weaves in mother figures for both protagonists in addition to their guardians, such as (mother-in-law) Mrs. McHenry for Vernice and Lulabelle for Annie...continued
Full Review
(862 words)
(Reviewed by Rebecca Foster).
Ann Patchett, author of Tom Lake
Kin is the kind of all-encompassing reading experience I'm always hoping to find: smart and funny and deftly profound. This is Tayari Jones's very best work. Roisin O'Donnell, author of Nesting
A riveting and deeply moving portrait of indelible female friendship, found family and finding your way... . This gorgeous novel already feels like a future classic.
In Tayari Jones's novel Kin, Black characters have varying experiences of class and privilege in the South in the 1950s and '60s. Coincidentally, I was reading Margo Jefferson's 2015 memoir Negroland at the same time, and in it I came across a reference to E. Franklin Frazier's Black Bourgeoisie (1957). The title intrigued me and seemed to fit the Atlanta milieu Jones's character Vernice enters when she enrolls in Spelman College. So I decided to dig a little deeper.
Frazier was a sociologist, elected as the first Black president of the American Sociological Association in 1948. Black Bourgeoisie was controversial, according to his UK publisher, New Beacon Books (the UK's first Black publisher), because it was "a critical analysis of...
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