Review of Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
So, I started reading the sample
chapter of this book on Kindle and stopped after the first few chapters. But
then when I bought my Kindle Paperwhite eReader, I decided to
continue and finish the 5 chapter sample. As soon as I did I
purchased the eBook and was addicted. I did take a week off from reading
to go on vacation but once I came back I finished the book in 2
days. I was so enthralled, I could not put the book down. I spent
almost my whole day off of work finishing the book.
This has been one of my best
experiences reading a book. I was so entranced in the story, the drama of
this young girl named Kya living alone in a shack in the marshland of North Carolina, trying
desperately to find a connection or family, but struggling to let people into her world. The first time she finds love as a teenager, she get her
heartbroken, and longing for someone to ease her loneliness she seeks
comfort in the wrong type of man. A decision that would affect the
rest of her life. Without giving too much of the story away, there is also a murder mystery that was so compelling. The author, Delia Owens, perfectly pieces out the clues throughout the book. So much so that I
didn't even figure out the ending until it happen. Owens does a
remarkable job captivating the reader; making us care about the life
of this young girl living in the marshland trying to survive by
herself. A big part of the book, is Owens describing Kya's experience in the marshland, the insects and the birds. The level of detail allows the reader to paint a vivid picture of the environment.
Owens mixes a bit of young adult
romance in there and I was hooked! But the story is more than that,
it's told in a non-linear timeline to help elude to the murder mystery. It's truly a story that I connected with emotionally. I felt a lot of sadness for the main
character, but it wasn't detached, it was real and relatable, as if Owens transported me into the marshland with this girl. The book does take a bleak tone on the nature of people, which at times is hard to deal with, because of that's how real life is, but it doesn't provide the hope that we would expect. Hope that people can be better or should do better. The character development is also a weak point of the story. The main character has some leaps in development that don't always appear logically, and the two love interests are nothing more than cliches. Which is sad, because I think that the shocking ending would have been better served if the characters were better developed.
This is not a perfect book, and I do understand a lot of the criticism that some people have towards it. However, my personal invested was such that I didn't care on my first reading. I will listen to the audiobook, as there were a lot of people that said the narrator did a great job. but while I see the flaws in the story, I can also ignore them because I found the main character to be compelling. If you
haven't read this book, do yourself a favor and read it now. It's
sort of a YA/Drama/Mystery but with out the melodramatic aspects that
can be a bit eyerolling with some YA books. Where the Crawdads Sing is a gripping tale about survival, abandonment, and abuse, now go
read it!
