Review by rachel_here - Where the Crawdads Sing

rachel_here 's review for:

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

2.75

emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Where the Crawdads Sing was at time charming, and at time infuriating. In this story we follow Kya, a young girl living in a marsh in North Carolina. After having been abandoned by her whole family, Kya has to fend for herself while dealing with a town who looks down on "marsh trash". Her story is one of love and loneliness, rhythmed by the tides and the coming and goings of gulls, as she comes of age and slowly opens up to other people- that is, until disaster strikes.

This novel is contemplative, and its greatest strength lies in the description of the Marsh and the animals that live there. I enjoyed reading about Kya exploring her environment at a young age and growing fascinated by the life she finds there. However the rest of the novel felt a bit lacking: the characters are pretty stereotyped, and the storyline itself (be it with its romance or its main mystery) is cliché and demands a lot of suspension of disbelief. Which I don't really mind: coupled with the descriptions, it gave the story a fairy tale vibe which was mostly charming in the first part.

However, there were many things that I disliked in this novel. The constant over-explanation of the storyline became a bit tiring at some point: since the story is rather straight-forward, I got annoyed when what was happening was less-than-subtly compared to what happens in nature, and then restated plainly when something drastic happened (as in "this character is actually like this animal, who acts this way and that way"). The written accents were hard to read in dialogue; and even without it, said dialogue felt kind of stilted, leaving no place to subtext or interpretation be it due to the characters stating their exact thoughts and feelings, or the narration explaining everything afterwards. Which poses a huge problem

in the ending when the omniscient narrator, which never hid anything from the reader, suddently chooses to hide the fact that Kya is a murderer for the last quarter of the book. Kya, who always dwells on her feelings, and even more so when she faces execution, never once thinks about the fact that she did, in fact, kill Chase and could be condemned for it. Which, at least in my mind, completely kills the anti-prejudice message of the novel, since the suspicions about her having murdered Chase - even if they were rooted in superstition and classism - were founded. As a plot twist in the last few pages it just didn't work, and it wouldn't have ruined the story so much for me if it was more developed to fit with the themes of the novel.

All in all, even if I did enjoy most of my time reading, all these issues really brought the book down for me. Adding to that

a romance that would've been really sweet if it weren't for the age gap and power imbalance between the characters (and the constant reaffirmation via the dialogue and the narration that, yes, this boy is indeed the right choice, not that other boy)

, and Where the Crawdads Sing is sadly a miss for me. The descriptions of the Marsh and most of Kya's life experiences in the first part, as well as her growing understanding of the abuse she suffered as a child and might suffer from as an adult, were the highlight for me. However the novel was too unequal to give it a higher rating.

Content Warnings