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242 reviews by:
itsawrapxx
reflective
Tayari Jones really knows how to pull at the heartstrings. Kin is a beautiful look at the idea that family is a verb, not just a biological fact. I was completely enveloped in the friendship between Neciey and Annie Kay, watching as their individual paths diverged and intersected. Jones paints a vivid portrait of lives shaped by both external societal pressures and internal emotional yearnings. Even though the characters are perpetually searching for motherly figures to fill the voids in their lives, they aren't left empty. They find love and belonging in the most unexpected places, suggesting that while we may seek a specific "type" of mothering, the universe often provides the "care" we need through our chosen connections. Perhaps the most striking takeaway is the idea that love is an active, one-sided responsibility. It is a choice we make every day, regardless of what is returned. This perspective transforms family into something actively chosen and maintained.
I really tried, I wasn't very interested in Evelyn and Quincy's relationship.
Happy Land really made me think about collective memory—who gets to tell the story, who gets remembered, and what gets lost along the way. At its core, this book is about ownership and lineage, but not just in the sense of “who owns the land.” It’s about who gets to claim history, who gets to benefit from it, and who is expected to carry the weight of remembering it.
What stood out to me is how Perkins-Valdez shows that memory isn’t individual—it’s communal. It lives in families, in traditions, in silence, and in the things people choose not to talk about. And ownership goes way beyond property here; it becomes about stewardship, responsibility, and what it means to honor the past without exploiting it. Lineage, too, isn’t just about blood—it’s about accountability and how we choose to carry our ancestors forward, especially when their stories have been erased or reshaped for convenience.
“What happens in this house stays in this house”—and whew, did this family live by that creed. Their silence was thick with secrets. Yet there’s something strikingly beautiful about the way truth and renewal unfold alongside death and tragedy: as buried truths surface, new life quietly takes root.
In parallel with the silence Sidney endures while searching for Carol, the families of the missing girls refuse to let their daughters be erased. Despite the authorities’ indifference and the absence of justice, they preserve memory as an act of resistance. By coming together, they reclaim their voices—and ultimately, justice—for the girls the world tried to forget.
I did find myself wishing we’d gone deeper into the inner lives of the adults, particularly the father, Carol’s mother, and the grandmother.
I enjoyed Audre a lot as a YA FMC. I think in the current world we live in, where there is pressure for young people to get it right and overachieve, there seems to be less room for letting loose and enjoying the messy ride that comes with being young and figuring things out. I love how Audre's character captures that and how we see Eva through her eyes.
It doesn't need to be this long. It's taking forever to get to the meat and potatoes. The pages of lyrics is unnecessary
