Reviews with content warning for Sexual violence - Where the Crawdads Sing

The story was fine, and the descriptions of nature were quiet good. I found it could be verbose at times, and, as others have pointed out, the dialogue was wasn't the strongest. While I liked the characters like Jumpin and such, the author builds tension only to accidentally deflate it too quickly and too soon. I have mixed feelings about this book. I got emotional at times, but it was lacking something that made the transition between the two (eventually coinciding) timelines choppy. The time jump in the last few chapters felt especially abrupt.

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megjayne50's review

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challenging tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Have not stopped thinking about it since. Loved it

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abbeyroad1410's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

The story telling format of this mystery was really fun. I enjoyed watching the story unfold simultaneously between the past and the present so that you could see how the past impacted these events and why she was suspected. Additionally, the story itself was fantastic. It was interesting to see the insider-outsider dynamic play out due to social class and poor family situations. Not to mention, Jumpin and Mabel (the best characters) showed how outsiders have empathy for other outsiders.
Despite liking many of the storytelling elements, one of the things I didn't like was Kya busting out into random poetry.

Despite the reveal that she was the poet the whole time,

the poetry felt like it lacked payoff and instead was placed throughout the novel to try to earn it credence as a literary masterpiece. If I'm being honest, I skimmed pretty much every poem, only reading the final one out of necessity.
Similarly, I felt the metaphors were trying too hard throughout the book. Many of them seemed forced and convoluted when a prior line could have stood on its own.
Perhaps my biggest complaint is also my pettiest: there is no way that Tate could have taught this child to read to the incredible extent he did. She attended one day of school, her family abandoned her while she was still in elementary level education, and she had never even seen her own name written out before. That plot point made limited sense to me, and I thought about it the entire novel.
All of this to say, I enjoyed the book. I enjoyed the cultural elements, including the traditional Southern foods. And thank God I found out what happened to Chase because the uncertainty was really bugging me.

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haythorn's review

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emotional hopeful inspiring medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

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magnoliabloomfield's review

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sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

0.75

Very very slow paced. Writing the accent annoyed me so much. The characters don’t recognize their own accent and you should write what they mean or else you distract the reader and distracted readers aren’t immersed in the story. We are bombarded with so much information about Kya in the beginning when we don’t necessarily want that much, and then later so much that we actually would have wanted to know was withheld. Also it felt like the author created a lot plot hole fixes on the spot and didn’t edited them into the story further back to foreshadow. For instance Jodie’s scar. If we knew he had it from the beginning we could have felt recognition when we see a scarred man later instead of getting a big chunk of backstory explaining it when what we really want is to stay in the present moment. Overall I was underwhelmed and unsatisfied. Don’t get the hype at all.

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cait's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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sreddous's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

I LOVE when a location is a "character" as much as the characters are, and, boy, this is an easy setting to get lost in. The descriptions are lovely and the pacing, especially in the first half, really shows what it's like to live in these kinds of rural communities. There's some emotional, heart-wrenching stuff in here -- it's really well done, the way Kya has social issues and doesn't know how to interact with people. Her connection with nature is truly believable and beautiful. The connections with the people she does have feel well-built-up, and I adored the friendships with Kya and Jumpin' and his family and Tate.

I think what didn't work for me quite as well are some of the details and then the overall pacing -- I actually sort of found myself wishing that there wasn't a murder accusation, that this was just a slice-of-life story about how a little girl survived in the marsh. The murder trial stuff felt a bit too rushed in the end -- without spoiling too much, I don't think there was enough buildup to show why Kya would make the choices she did. The framing seems to be that "this is the first time she had to actually live in fear, worrying someone was going to come find her" but... that's pretty much expressed in one scene, when there should have been a lot more nuance to that given how the rest of her life has played out.

Also, the "Rural North Carolina" accents.... abruptly stop about halfway through. It seems that once Kya learned to read and write, she totally and completely stopped talking like a rural "country" person -- I don't buy it. It's too extreme. I'm picky about accents being written literally out in books overall, but because for the first half of the book it was consistent, I found it immersive. But we have a character going from: "What d'ya mean? It ain't just that. I wadn't aware..." to : "Jodie, maybe I'm just tired right now. In fact, I'm exhausted." and I don't think that's realistic. Just learning to read and replacing some words such as "ain't" wouldn't stop a person who is otherwise really isolated from the diverse ways different people speak from changing their accent THAT much, I feel like even people who travel internationally and immigrate don't have their accents change THAT much. So it bugged me, it almost felt like the message was: "if you're an uneducated country bumpkin you talk with an accent, and if you can read, you don't" or something? Which I think is judgmental and unfair.

Still, accepting this for what it is, this was an "easy read" in the sense that it was indeed pretty easy to get swept away in the swamp and marsh landscapes and stormy hot weather here. Immersive stuff!

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