I didn’t get to record a long format review or breakdown so here is a taste of the story followed by my thoughts and Where the Crawdads Sing book review.
Where the Crawdad’s Sing Teaser
Taking place in North Carolina coast, the book immediately opens with the murder of Chase Andrews. Star quarter back, good looking, and son to one of the only large department stores in Barkley Cove, Chase was one of the most well known and privileged people in town. Everyone had watched him go from young rambunctious young man to the hard working husband that he was before they found him at the bottom of the fire tower. Two kids from town had reported him to the police and in the 1950’s forensics wasn’t what it is today. The detectives tried to collect all the evidence possible but after swabbing everything for finger prints and foot prints they couldn’t find any, not even Chase’s.
Something fishy is going on in these North Carolina Swamp waters and other than Chase himself the only one that might know what happened is the town’s legendary Marsh Girl.
The book has two starting points, the first is Chase Andrew’s murder, the other is Kya’s childhood. The0 book does a great job of pulling the reader towards on point in time, the moment of Chase Andrew’s death. This converging timeline concept helps break up the story and keeps things moving. The hunt for Kaya begins.
Where the Crawdads Sing Book Review
I feel horrible because I never really finished writing this book review back in 2022 and now it’s been months since I read the story so it’s safe to say I don’t remember a lot of the details. But what I do remember is this, I loved this book. I loved the relationships in this book. I loved the characters in this book. It might be a part of my wild heart that made a special connection to the main character in this book, the March girl but man did I love her. I loved her passion, her courage, and her grit. This is the kind of book that makes your heart sore on a warm summer evening. The perfect read after a long day of hard work.
Book Rating: 10/10
Would read again and recommend.
The book had a little bit of everything. Tragic upbringings, alcoholic family members, abuse and abandonment. A wild girl that grows up in the swamp. A kind strangers that show her what love means (not in the way you think, you dirty thinker) a familial kind of love. The kind of love that reprimands you for making questionable choices, and holds you when you’re heart broken. Which by the way, do we have heart break. We have a lot of love love, some betrayal and of course, we can’t skim over the murder. A murder which rocked this sleepy town to its core. A town which very well would be putting the Marsh Girl on trial in the biggest version of “who done it” that this town ever seen.
The book is not all roses and ponies, on the contrary it’s quite dark at times, but it’s human. So much of it is just raw human everything. Emotional and unexceptionally flawed. Complex and so beautifully simple. The characters are so round you feel like you might meet them the next time you’re in a small town bar. I loved it. Very few times did I feel like the book dragged or like I was reading filler. You move through time with ease as you’re constantly jostled forward and back to the final moment. That one moment that changed the Marsh girl’s life forever.
This is the kind of book I’ll probably reread on a short summer trip, or on a rainy weekend. Highly recommend, and I haven’t even seen the Netflix movie yet.
