National Book Award finalist and Coretta Scott King Award winner Ibi Zoboi (American Street; Nigeria Jones) enters the world of young adult fantasy with the groundbreaking (S)Kin, a novel-in-verse inspired by Caribbean folklore that focuses on two struggling teens in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Fifteen-year-old Marisol and her mother, Lourdes, have just arrived from the Caribbean and have settled into a small apartment in Brooklyn. Marisol and Lourdes are soucouyants: every (metaphorical) new moon they shed their skins, shapeshift into "vapor and vengeance/ ...ghost and deadly smoke," and sip from unsuspecting souls to sustain themselves. Lourdes knows that in this new place they will be called "Newcomers. Refugees. Migrants./ Undocumented. Illegal" but has hope "they will never call us monsters." Marisol, though, already feels like a monster. The teen is torn between honoring the legacy of her supernatural abilities and trying to make a new home in the U.S.
Seventeen-year-old Genevieve is the biracial daughter of a white anthropologist and an absent Black mother. Genevieve struggles to fit in with her white family while trying to learn about her mother through her father's collected stories from the Caribbean. The young woman yearns to make sense of herself, her history, and the "Itching. Burning" skin condition which is relieved only by the (metaphorical) full moon. Genevieve and Marisol meet when Lourdes is hired by Genevieve's white stepmother, Kate, as a nanny to her twin baby siblings. Lourdes and Marisol move into Genevieve's family home and the girls discover a connection between them that is significantly more than skin deep.
Zoboi displays her immense talent in a new genre by creating a first-class, haunting urban fantasy. The author's passionate verse is relayed in alternating first-person points of view, with Genevieve's lines on the left-hand side of the page and Marisol's on the right. Caribbean folklore blends with the urban environment, showcasing both characters' aching experiences as they struggle with loneliness and feeling like misfits in their own homes. In this elegant work, Zoboi covers topics of identity, family history, mother-daughter relationships, beauty ideals, colorism, and the complexities of immigration. (S)Kin is an outstanding, dark, and fast paced fantastical YA novel that will likely be loved by fans of Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi and Blood Scion by Deborah Falaye. --Natasha Harris, freelance reviewer
Shelf Talker: Two teenage girls living in Brooklyn, N.Y., struggle to find their identities in this raw and original urban fantasy novel-in-verse inspired by Afro-Caribbean folklore.