Something Kindred

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 livesâ"someone she knows only two things about: her name and the fact that she left Jerickaâs 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 âghost girlâ 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 townâs hold. As Jericka feels the chilling pull of her familyâs past, she begins to question everything she thought she knew about her mother, her childhood, and the lines between the living and the dead.