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.