Kin
A Novel
Readers rate it 4.2 (37 on Hardcover)
369 pages · Released Feb 24, 2026 · Random House
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A note for parents
Kin is a literary novel for adult readers centered on adult female friendships, maternal trauma, and coming-of-age in the American South. While the prose is intelligent and emotionally resonant, the book addresses serious themes including abandonment, grief, and a 'battle for life' that suggest mature content. The sapphic elements and complex family dynamics are woven throughout but not the primary focus; this is best suited for mature teen readers and adults rather than younger audiences.
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From the publisher
OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK • 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 devastatin... OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK • 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. "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.” —Ann Patchett, author of Tom Lake 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.
Shelved under
- Fiction
- LGBTQ
- sapphic
- Historical Fiction
- Literary Fiction
- Historical
- African American
- Friendship
- Contemporary
- Family
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ISBN 9780525659181 · Random House