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Buddy Review of Kin by Tayari Jones with Erin Ashley

Everything we loved about Kin's characters, plotting and themes

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Kate Hergott and Erin Ashley
Mar 13, 2026
Cross-posted by Bookwild
"Hi friends, I joined my friend Kate of Bookwild on her podcast to talk about Tayari Jones' new novel Kin. Spoilers ahead, so if you haven't read it yet, please do. And if you haven't, this conversation might just make you want to."
- Erin Ashley

Erin and I both adored Kin by Tayari Jones, and we decided to do a whole episode discussing it! The first 15ish minutes are spoiler free, so if you haven’t read it yet, you can listen and decide if the vibes sound right for you. After that, we get into everything we loved about the characters, the prose, the plotting and the themes!

Kin by Tayari Jones Synopsis

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 Atlanta at eighteen for Spelman College, where she joins a sisterhood of powerfully connected Black women and marries into an affluent family. Annie, abandoned by her dissolute 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, and culminate in a battle for her life.

Listen on Apple or Spotify or watch here:

Links we discussed


Tayari Jones Oprah Interview

Tayari Jones on The Stacks

Erin’s Interview with ReShanda Tate about With Love From Harlem

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A guest post by
Erin Ashley
music and book lover.
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