Reviews tagging 'Alcoholism'

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

717 reviews

johnsongracea's review

adventurous dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Death, Murder, and Abandonment

Moderate: Alcoholism, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, and Grief

Minor: Rape and Death of parent

emilyarice's review

adventurous emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective relaxing sad medium-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

4.75

This was so good. Kya is such an emotionally deep character with a powerful mind but has been judged her entire life, and her prospects of love, daring and fun, and her very-real mistakes, truly made her embody a real human spirit. The novel was able to be informative and teach the reader about things that they would never learn on their own (specifically about the marsh) while also tugging at our heartstrings, making us love Tate but despise Chase. The one critique I have is that the last 2 chapters of the book could have been 6.

I understand that the end of the book was not the premise of the story but was rather giving the readers fulfillment with an end to the story. It just felt very rushed compared to the rest of the story, but it also makes sense because the rest of her life was lived in peace, while the intense parts that the book is actually about required more detail. 

Anyways, I loved the book! 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Domestic abuse, and Abandonment

Moderate: Physical abuse, Rape, Grief, Death of parent, and Murder

lindsaywalsvick's review

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Bullying, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Physical abuse, Death of parent, Abandonment, and Classism

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Blood, Grief, and Murder

Minor: Infidelity, Racial slurs, Self harm, Terminal illness, and Injury/Injury detail

iamlaura's review

emotional hopeful fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Child abuse, and Domestic abuse

haleysversion's review against another edition

emotional mysterious reflective fast-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Death, Emotional abuse, Infertility, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Blood, Death of parent, Murder, Abandonment, Alcohol, and Classism

jaybird27's review against another edition

emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

The story's detailed descriptions and multidimensional main character made a great start to my 2025 reading year. I'm a fan of mysteries and historical fiction, both genres that use mixed timelines a lot, and found this handled it particularly well. Would recommend. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Abandonment, and Classism

Moderate: Child abuse, Racism, and Sexual assault

Minor: Murder

sayoni198's review

medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

I began 2025 with a novel that I had bought 2 years ago but never read.
If a love story (a love story between a young girl and nature), a love letter to marshlands, a Bildungsroman, and a murder mystery could be perfectly packed into a novel, that would be: *Where The Crawdads Sing.* 
Never have I read a story where the author breathes life and soul into every nonliving object like the lagoons, the sea, the rivulets, the shadows, and the mud, where the author gives life, personality, characteristic traits to nature more than to humans, to every tadpole, every firefly, every sea gull, every oak tree, every blade of grass, every heron, and every bird as if they are not artifacts to be conserved but a family, a community to be nurtured and live in coexistence with. 
The novel explores the life of Kya, a girl who was abandoned by her whole family and grew up all alone in the marshlands and swamps of North Carolina, USA in the 1950s. She was isolated, neglected, and cast off by even the townspeople and labeled as the Marsh Girl or White trash. This made her learn how to survive on her own, make the gulls her family, and fend for herself for most of her childhood and youth. Human characters do have personalities in the novel yes, but they are mostly limited to the kind of impact (positive or negative, big or small) that they had on Kya. Or they were known by their professions or race or class. But it is the flora and fauna that play a role beyond as being the setting of the novel and are also the objective observer, witnesses to significant milestones of Kya's life, keeper of secrets, and a gateway or a glimpse to the world that *Delia Owens* (the author) has created for her readers. 
Kya's complicated relationship with humanity goes beyond the Jungle Book-esque survival story of a girl literally raised by the marshlands. I say this because I have a special inclining for female survival stories because women, who are traumatized enough to expect nothing but abandonment from society and civilization, who no one imagines anything of who go on to do the things no one can imagine.
Where The Crawdads Sing is the story of such a woman.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Confinement, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, and Abandonment

Moderate: Racism

dorynickel's review

adventurous medium-paced

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

1.0

This book is very readable, but unfortunately just not very good.

The prose is stilted and awkward, many of the characters aren't interesting, and the plot is never all that intriguing beyond the suspense element. Top that off with weird implausibilities like

a woman being charged with *capital* murder in the 1960s for the murder of her rapist

and overall this makes for a book that your coworker and grandma loved but you just can't figure out what they liked about it.

1/5 not worth it 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse and Domestic abuse

Moderate: Racial slurs and Rape

Minor: Alcoholism and Grief

shadowsportrait's review against another edition

adventurous dark reflective tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, and Stalking

Moderate: Alcoholism, Bullying, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, and Racial slurs

grapjuice's review

adventurous emotional tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• 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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Content Warnings

Moderate: Alcoholism, Child abuse, and Abandonment