In skin + bones: a novel Renée Watson debuts her lyrical writing for an adult audience. A prominent writer for children and young adults, this novel confirms what readers of her writing for young people already know: Watson is one of the greatest lyrical writers of our time. Watson writes in such a way that you don’t know when she is writing prose and when she is writing poetry. Spoiler alert: it is always prose and always poetry. Always. 

This novel, told in fragments and vignettes and maps made of words and poems and definitions and even a recipe, follows Lena, a fat Black woman living and loving and mothering and working in Portland. We see how her intersectional identities inform so much of her lived experiences in ways that provide meaningful representation. 

I can’t share enough love for this book and this writing. This is the first book I completed in 2025, and it has set the bar so incredibly high that I doubt I’ll read another book as well-written and as beautiful as skin + bones.