Something Kindred

By Ciera Burch

Magical realism meets Southern Gothic in this commanding YA debut featuring a love triangle, bisexuality, ghosts, and intergenerational trauma within an African American family.

Jericka Walker had planned to spend the summer before senior year soaking up the sun with her best friend on the Jersey Shore. Instead she finds herself in Coldwater, Maryland, a small town where her estranged and dying grandmother lives—a grandmother she knows only two things about: her name and the fact that she left Jericka’s mother and uncle when they were children.

Soon Jericka meets "ghost girl" Kat, who is eager to leave Coldwater and more intriguing than a person has any right to be. But Coldwater has a few secrets of its own. The more you try to leave, the stronger the town’s hold. As Jericka feels the chilling pull of her family’s past, she begins to question everything she thought she knew about her mother, her childhood, and the lines between the living and the dead.