Something Kindred is a Young Adult novel rich with magical realism. When Jericka Walker is brought by her mother to Coldwater, Maryland to spend time with her estranged and dying grandmother, she finds herself in a small town haunted by secrets and ghosts. The town settles over Jericka like cold water, chilling her with a pull toward the past that makes her question what she believed she knew about her own mother and the grandmother who abandoned their family.

Coldwater is a town founded by formerly enslaved people, and the novel explores the trauma rooted in the history of white supremacy. Burch centers Black experiences and sapphic romance in a way that adds to the Young Adult genre, and her story explores the pain of abandonment, grief, hurt, and betrayal. Overall, the book is a spellbinding look at the way history and family shape our lives and identities.

Thank you to NetGalley for a free copy of the book in exchange for a fair review.

Let's get this out of the way first: yes, the hype is wrong. This book should not be described as a Southern Gothic. It's Magical Realism, at best. That said, if you like a coming of age story with side-serving of empathetic ghosts, you'll enjoy this book.

Jericka is the teenaged daughter of a restless mother. The pair are constantly on the move, leaving Jericka longing for home and security. Then her Gram gets cancer, and her mom takes them down to their hometown in Maryland. Jericka spends the summer getting to know Gram for the first time, learning about her family, and making friends or possibly more with a local girl. She's also trying to start a photography project that will help her get into art school.

This was nice. Sweet. It's a lot of Jericka trying to decide between the family tradition of doing an r-u-n-n-o-f-t, and staying put and making a home for herself. New girl or old boyfriend? Mother's way of life or father's?

There's an interesting back-story: ex-enslaved people built the town and were very proud of it, but the local government wasn't a fan so they sent someone to burn down the schoolhouse. It being after hours at the time, the majority of the dead were mothers who had been meeting at the school. These mothers became ghosts, or echoes, which wander the town and try to scare its living women into never leaving. As you can imagine this has the opposite effect, and it seems like a lot of children are left behind by their mothers. Cool history but it never really goes anywhere. It mostly just serves to amplify Jericka's feelings and indecision. I guess this would have been a short book without that storyline.

Alright I'm going to go ahead and address the elephant in room here and just say that yes this book is not spooky. This has much more of a magical realism vibe than a Gothic one but this was still a solid read.
This is a great family drama with some solid romantic and a sprinkle of ghost. This book deals with some great subjects and has a beautiful Sapphic romance at its center. The ghostly aspect feels more like an accent to the real story. That being said I still really enjoyed this book. Everything about it was solid. It should have just been labeled magical realism.

Big thank you NetGalley and to the publisher for the chance to review this book pre-release. I really enjoyed this book, and while I agree that it's focus on ghosts is a small sliver of the story, I don't believe that it was mis-marketed, as I believe that the familial aspect is a big part of the atmospheric gothic vibes. I think this might be one of my favorite reads this year so far, and I think that the unexpectedness of the dynamic might be my favorite part. A more formal review will be available on my IG/TikTok and Goodreads.

So, this book wasn’t what I was expecting. The synopsis is way more ominous than the book is. I went into the book assuming there would be a curse on the town and vengeful spirits. There are spirits, but they aren’t the focus of the novel. I’d say the book is like 50% family story, 40% romance, and 10% ghosts. Which is not a bad thing at all and it was definitely a good book, I just wish it had been advertised correctly.

This novel was an emotional one full of abandonment, grief, love, and so much more. The family dynamic was very interesting. The family had lots of depth and conflicting feelings of love and immense hurt & betrayal. And I loved Kat, the love interest. She was such a fun and kind person, and honestly, she deserved better than the main character Jericka. I really disliked Jericka’s character. She was selfish, inconsiderate, and just straight up mean at times. I did enjoy a lot of the side characters though!

I definitely would’ve enjoyed this more if I knew that I was getting into more of a coming of age type of story rather than a ghost story. So if you’re looking for an emotional read with complex family dynamics and first love (with a few ghosts & a southern gothic feel) you’ll enjoy this one!

I received a free e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group and NetGalley for this arc. All opinions are my own.

TW: parental abandonment, cancer, domestic and child abuse, death, racism, hate crimes

Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like this book is marketed to the wrong demographic. I read 44% but stopped because it was not what I thought it would be. The description mentioned southern gothic, which I’m obsessed with, but that was completely inaccurate.. (How could it even be southern when it takes place in Maryland???) The gothic atmosphere was just not there for me.
From what I read, it was a mixture of about 70% family drama, 29% lesbian love story, and 1% ghosts.
If you’re looking for those in a YA novel, you might enjoy this one. If you’re looking for a spooky southern gothic, I’d skip this.

Thank you to the publisher for the digital ARC!

WOW. SOMETHING KINDRED blew me away, from its premise to the author's gorgeous style. Supernatural, magical, and gothic, this book is an eerie exploration of small towns with secrets. Teen readers will love the queer romance (which unfolds beautifully btw). the mystery, and the themes of racial trauma.

SOMETHING KINDRED is part family story, part ghost story, and part romance, and I found it so compelling. The whole book wrestles with these tensions between staying at and leaving your home (and to a lesser extent, what "home" means), and one of the things I liked best about it is that each of the characters has their own perspective and it's not clear that any of those perspectives are right - are even right for those characters. The setting, too, felt so vivid and real. This comes out in April 2024 and I think it is a beautiful book.

This had elements of a lot of books I really love (Legendborn, The Dead and the Dark, We Deserve Monuments) and I think it was just difficult for me to not compare it to those books as I was reading it. Not a bad book by any means, I just think similar things have been done better by other authors.

I’m not generally a huge magical realism fan because it usually leaves me wanting more but I really enjoyed this one. I think the reason I liked it so much was because of the historical, small-town aspect of this book. You can see how Black history and white supremacy have shaped Coldwater, Maryland (which I think might be a fictional place) and why it has the ghosts (echoes) it does.

Jericka was an interesting teenage main character as well. While she was certainly angsty, it was never overdone and her anger, frustration, and fears all came from very valid places of hurt. I also loved her interactions with Kat - it was just so sweet and so wholesome.

I did wonder what happened to Jericka’s best friend in the second half of the book. It felt like they just suddenly stopped talking completely and maybe I missed something but it felt disjointed and awkward. I also would have liked to see an epilogue to see where Jericka ends up and if she and Kat are still together.

Solid YA black horror that touches on the legacy of racism and lynching in the post civil war era south-- a summery, Sapphic, small-town Southern gothic that's replete with ghosts, grief, first love, and intergenerational trauma. Something Kindred is a quick, engrossing read with well realized characters that you'll quickly feel attached to.

I think this is the best book I've read, and quite possibly will read, all year. I (mistakenly) thought this was going to be another "teen grudgingly reconnects with their small town familial roots over the summer, and also there's spooky stuff" novel, and while there *are* ghosts, and main character Jericka certainly *is* initially begrudging of her summer away from friends in a tiny Maryland town, this book is so, SO much more. Set in a town founded by formerly enslaved people, with a supernatural element rooted in the trauma of white supremacy and racist violence, this YA novel centers Black history and contemporary Black experiences in ways that (to me, at least) totally up-end the still-persistent publishing notion that white feelings, or white experiences, need to be anywhere at all in the story. Ciera Burch's writing is absolutely breathtaking and immersive, and the way the novel deals with forgiveness, family, belonging, betrayal, trauma, and growing up is so deep and nuanced. It takes a lot of plot beats that could be tedious, or at least stereotypical, and makes them something transcendent but still utterly quiet. And all of this is not the mention the budding sapphic relationship at the center. Just...this is a staggeringly good novel. Read it.