Something Kindred -- Ciera Burch, Hardcover

Magical realism meets Southern Gothic in this commanding young adult debut from Ciera Burch about true love, the meaning of home, and the choices that haunt us.

Welcome to Coldwater. Come for the ghosts, stay for the drama.

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 with a dark and complicated past where her estranged grandmother lives--someone she knows only two things about: her name and the fact that she left Jericka's mother and uncle when they were children. But now Jericka's grandmother is dying, and her mother has dragged Jericka along to say goodbye.

As Jericka attempts to form a connection with a woman she's never known, and adjusts to life in a town where everything closes before dinner, she meets "ghost girl" Kat, a girl eager to leave Coldwater and more exciting than a person has any right to be. But Coldwater has a few unsettling 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.

Author: Ciera Burch
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Byr)
Published: 04/02/2024
Pages: 304
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.80lbs
Size: 7.40h x 5.20w x 1.30d
ISBN: 9780374389130
Age Range: 12-18

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 03/01/2024
Booklist 03/15/2024 pg. 65
Publishers Weekly 03/25/2024

About the Author
Ciera Burch is a lifelong writer and ice cream aficionado. She has a B.A from American University and an MFA from Emerson College. Her fiction has appeared in American Literary Magazine, Underground, the art and literary journal of Georgia State University, Stork, and Blackbird. While she is originally from New Jersey, she currently resides in Washington, D.C. with her stuffed animals and far too many books.