Where the Crawdads Sing

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.