Vernice and Annie, best friends and loyal companions since infancy, leave their hometown of Honeysuckle, Louisiana, on very different life trajectories. Jones vividly describes their journeys, allowing the reader to feel deeply each of the bumps along the road as Vernice attends Spelman College in Atlanta and Annie desperately seeks to establish a relationship with her birth mother in Memphis. The powerful bond these friends maintain across the miles and the years reminds us that we don’t have to be biologically related in order to be “kin.”
Kin by Tayari Jones, (List Price: $32, Knopf, 9780525659181, February 2026)
Reviewed by Burch Barger, Righton Books in St Simons Island, Georgia