Where the Crawdads Sing

So basically this book, to me, was full of love, hope and nature. I totally appreciate the writing style of Delia, putting pillars of clues of a murder with Kya's growth from a wild girl into a woman who could read and write well. Surely, the suspense in this book was very well shaped, it keeps you digging more and more as to know what will happen next. What more to say is the theme of the book, the core of how isolation can affect we humans, the social mammals at all. It was really deep to me that the long lack of love and care of Kya could cause her to react so strongly when to deal with sexual violence. She was long abandoned by her family, so she seek the sense of community, living like everyone else does, and to understand that she was forever an outcast of the place, leaving her with wild until her death. It was a heartwarming book. It taught us there's love and hope, and there'll always be pain while dealing with people. And to illustrate the point that us, humans, as often the intruders of nature, breaking the perfect balance between nature and living species, just like the town in North Carolina slowly turning into a commercial and developed place within years. It gets rarer and rarer for us to live fully by wild every now and then. So as to treasure the sight of nature's beauty presence while we still can, do our part to not destroy it as much as we can.
Indeed a very well-written novel.

4.5 Like the cranky elder this makes me sound like, I'm not always into super-hyped books, but this one really lived up to its reputation. Owens had me by the second paragraph with “decomposition is cellular work.” Oh okay, this is what we're in for?! It's clear she's a scientist because the lovingly-written details of nature are worth the read alone. But she's also a great story teller, and I appreciated how the shifts in time continued to narrow and flesh out Kya's history and her family's story. I thought the ending was perhaps a bit Nicholas Sparks-ish (I'm purely basing this on common knowledge of his work and the one time I watched the Notebook, so what do I really know here) and I was befuddled by the trips to Asheville, when it's much more likely that they'd be taking trips to Wilmington to get supplies - that one aspect seemed like a writer who didn't really know the area. Other than those totally minor quibbles, a really enjoyable read.

I'm not sure what to make of this. I generally don't have a problem with broad tropes and cliches when a story has some fun with it, but there was very little levity in this book and it felt like it was trying to make profound statements that just came across as very dull.

Kya is a dirty swamp dweller who is actually alluringly beautiful. She's uneducated and illiterate, but actually a brilliant scientist and author. She even manages to find herself in essentially a classic racial prejudice story, but she doesn't even need a white saviour because she herself is white (what?).

The character Tate leaves part way through this book seemingly only to cause tension for the plot. The central murder is too unexplained by the last five minutes of the book for the reader to not expect something to happen, (and really only Kya or maybe Tate could have done it?) so it takes the punch out of something which maybe could have been a nice little reveal.

There's a serene quality to much of the writing that I enjoyed and a few plot and thematic sort of callbacks (though the effect was often lessened by an exact explanation as to its meaning the moment after). I thought the interweaving of the timelines mostly worked as well.

Very simplistic plot and characters. Each character felt like a total archetype (quarterback jock, “wild” girl, young pure love, prissy townspeople...). At some points I felt like I was reading a high schooler's short story.

The writing felt heavy-handed at times with people's “accents” and the nature descriptions. How many times do I need to read that the marsh was beautiful and wild and alive and..etc etc. in soooo much flowery language?

I enjoyed the uncomplicated depictions of the familial and romantic love that Kya developed with others as she grew older. I also liked Sunday Justice, the cat.

One sentence synopsis... Reclusive and independent girl raising herself in the deep South tries to solve her boyfriend's murder while also becoming the main suspect.

Read it if you liked... Leave No Trace (If you haven't seen Leave No Trace, get off Instagram and go rent it now)

Dream casting... a younger Kristen Stewart or ‘Skins' era Kaya Scodelario as Kya, Evan Peters as Tate (could be influenced by his name being Tate in AHS)

For me, I think the hype around this book had a negative impact on how I experienced it. I had high expectations and they weren't met at all.
The twist was very predictable, so the 12-hour audiobook felt ploddingly slow at times. Sure, I went back and forth on who I thought the murderer was a few times but wasn't at all surprised at the reveal. It also didn't feel realistic to me that such a pariah of the community wouldn't be convicted regardless of whether she was guilty or not.
I love poetry but even for me the frequent injections of poetry from “Amanda Hamilton” became annoying.
That's not to say this isn't a well written book. There's a lot of beautiful, vivid imagery. But this one just didn't do it for me.

I am currently reading this book for the second time. I listened to the audiobook last summer, and after seeing the movie this year I had to pick up my own copy and read it again. Something deep within me connected to this book. There is a lot of controversy around it, but my introverted adventurous soul found a home here.

I fell in love with Kya. She was abandoned age 10 and was known all over town as the “Marsh Girl”. Two local boys took interest in her. Tate,who is her first love and teacher her to read. Then there is Chase, the local high school quarterback. Kya's story of who she is able to survive alone and thrive in the marsh is heartwarming until tragedy strikes. I keep thinking about the characters in the book after I have finished it. Definitely recommend!!

I've been trying to figure out what it is that I don't like about this book. Since it has been so wildly popular with other readers, I feel like I must be from another planet.

There were some details that didn't sit right with me, as well as bad dialogue and underdeveloped characters. There seemed to be no reason to set the story in the 1960s other than to not have to deal with cell phones or a more robust social work system. Certainly the time period wasn't used in the story.

However, if I was really into the story, I think I would have overlooked all of that.

At the beginning of the book, when Kya's mother walks out on the family, I was really invested in what was going to happen to her. As the book went on, I felt that most things were getting resolved pretty quickly. She solves all of her problems with relative ease and there is never any intense moment when her life is really in danger due to the swamp/environment. She is a “social outcast” but gets boyfriends and her social skills seem fine when she needs to pull them out.

I think the problem for me is that the writer wants us to sympathize and even worship Kya. Owens bends the events of the story around her, rather than let the story happen to Kya and see how she might deal with it. As a reader, I wasn't feeling any deep connection with this character and was really only reading to the end to see the resolution of the murder mystery. I think Owens expects the readers to think even the murder is justified. (Not legal, but justified.) Kya can do no wrong and there is no moral conflict and no risks taken that we won't like her.

Devastatingly powerful

Without a doubt a book that grabs your heart and imagination and pulls on it for over 350 pages. Delia Owens has created a life here that I was fully invested in and had me feeling every emotion possible. Never have I felt so invested in a book to the point where one minute I was nervous and the next I felt I could cry. Her writing style and descriptive writing needs no praise, it's phenomenal. You can visualise the world and almost feel the surrounding through her words. Absolutely outstanding. The second book of the year I'd give six stars if I could.

Er det noen sammenheng mellom de beste bøkene og de beste selgerne? Etter å ha lest der en bok som har satt rekord for lengst sammenhengende førsteplass på bestselgerlisten til New York Times er svaret ganske enkelt: Ingen som helst.

Dette er en dårlig versjon av Nicholas Sparks, en historie som ikke er til å tro på, med litterære kvaliteter på nivå med en skolestil, i en historie som selvsagt ender opp i en amerikansk rettssal, slik alle bestselgerromaner fra USA må gjøre for å skape spenning - og likevel trives jeg gjennom nesten alle de 368 sidene med naturskildringer og eksotisk landskap som er så spennende at jeg har begynt å undersøke mulighetene for å ta meg en ferie nær Outer Banks.

Dette er ikke stor litteratur, det er knapt litteratur, det er uten spenning, men likevel medrivende. Er det mulig?