Much like other immensely popular things, I choose not to believe the hype about Delia Owens debut fiction effort, Where the Crawdads Sing. This usually means I’ll never check these things out (here’s looking at you Harry Potter), or I will check them out many moons later. I realize the 2018 wasn’t all that long ago, but really got me interested in reading this bestseller was the film adaptation involvement of excellent actor, Harris Dickinson. With that being said, I was still really hesitant to read this book about a swamp hick.
I sorely underestimated the greatness of this book! It was equal parts a drama and a mystery. We first meet Kya Clark as a very young girl, living in a North Carolina marsh with her family, but one by one they all start abandoning her to escape their violently abusive father. When it’s just the two of them left, he does manage to treat her kindly for a short time, but eventually he wanders away for good, too. Kya, still only seven at the time she’s totally abandoned, decides to make due on her own at the marsh shack, and somehow manages to make enough money to live. She never attended school, but it taught to read at fourteen by one of her brother’s old friends, Tate. They share a common interest in birds and other wildlife around the marsh, and while Kya thinks sometimes he’s teaching her out of pity, Tate is truly fascinated by Kya. The two are clearly in love, but by the time college rolls around, Tate takes the cowards way out, too.
Some few years later, Kya begins a long-term, but very secretive relationship with the town’s hot shot, Chase Andrews. He’s got some redeeming qualities, and even though he doesn’t quite hold a candle to Tate, Kya chooses companionship over loneliness. Once she finds out he’s engaged to another woman from an article in the local paper though, she cuts ties with him for good. It’s only a little while later that Chase is found dead at the bottom of a water tower, and after some serious digging, Kya is the main suspect. As she waits on trial for the evidence to likely work against her, it’s so touching to see the amount of support she actually does have in her life. They might not all be family by blood, but they’re a lot closer than she’d ever been to most of her real family.
I certainly won’t spoil who in fact did kill Chase Andrews, but that book had me itching to read ahead and see who the real culprit was! This book was extremely well written and engaging from the jump. Within the first chapter I thought to myself that I might have made a mistake picking this book up, because I certainly don’t care about nature the way that Kya (or the author) clearly does, but this book was written in a way to be equal parts educational but still entertaining. It made me want to go to a beach immediately if anything. I think what kept me reading was the pureness of Kya’s character and that she actually had someone, really a few someones, who genuinely cared about her. As a former skeptic, I couldn’t recommend this book more! And I obviously look forward to the film adaptation in the future.