Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens tells the story of Kya, beginning with when she was six years old living on the marsh in North Carolina. She has fond memories of her childhood on the marsh, until one day her mom abandons the marsh, leaving Kya and her six older siblings with their alcoholic father. One by one, each of Kya’s siblings take off too, leaving Kya alone with her Pa, forced to learn to fend for herself. In doing so, the townspeople start to talk about Kya, speculating and calling her names: “missing link”, “marsh trash”, and most commonly “marsh girl”. Kya doesn’t pay much mind to this, however, and eventually she learns to take her Pa’s boat out on the marsh to fish. One day she gets lost and meets a friend of her brother Jodi, Tate, who guides her back. Tate and Kya become friends later on, when he offers to teach Kya how to read. As they grow older, they begin a short-lived romantic relationship, until Tate leaves for college and breaks his promise of returning and visiting her. At 19 years old, she meets Chase Andrews, who takes her out on a picnic and the two begin a relationship as well. However, despite promises of marriage and a future together, Chase doesn’t introduce Kya to his friends or family, and it is revealed that Chase is engaged to another girl, Pearl, who lives a more “proper” life. When the body of Chase Andrews is found below an abandoned fire tower by the marsh, the town’s Sheriff launches an investigation into his mysterious death, with Kya as the prime suspect.
In my opinion only, Where the Crawdads Sing was a good book, but I wouldn’t say it was a must-read by any means. I found it somewhat hard to get into at first, and it never really piqued my interest at all. In my opinion only, even though this book is supposed to be a thrilling, page-turning mystery, I found the plot to be pretty lackluster and the book was overall too long-winded to capture the attention of the reader for the entirety of the book. I don’t want to be entirely negative in my review, as I do think there were some interesting parts of the story, this book just simply wasn’t for me. I wish I could recommend it more, but I just feel like this book was not worth all the hype it receives. In my opinion only, if you really want to find out how the story ends, I would just save your time and watch the movie.
I never read the book but I watched the movie and really enjoyed it. I thought the turn of the plot at the end was very unpredicatable. I am glad to hear the book is ok to skip, as I watched the movie first!
Also a popular book to check in and out of the library. I find it very interesting how you suggest the movie OVER the book– usually it seems to be very much the opposite.