Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:   Pam Dupont

Author:   Delia Owens

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction

384 pages, published August 14, 2018

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

Where the Crawdads Sing tells the story of Kya Clark who was abandoned by her parents in the early 1960’s and left to fend for herself in the backwaters of Barkley Cove, a small town on the North Carolina coast.  Known to locals as the mysterious “Marsh Girl,” Kya teaches herself to read and channels her love of nature into a rare expertise for the tidewater flora and fauna.  When Chase Andrews is found dead in 1969, Kya is immediately suspected and put on trial.

Quotes 

“I wasn’t aware that words could hold so much. I didn’t know a sentence could be so full.”

 

“She knew the years of isolation had altered her behavior until she was different from others, but it wasn’t her fault she’d been alone. Most of what she knew, she’d learned from the wild. Nature had nurtured, tutored, and protected her when no one else would.”

 

“She could read anything now, he said, and once you can read anything you can learn everything. It was up to her. “Nobody’s come close to filling their brains,” he said. “We’re all like giraffes not using their necks to reach the higher leaves.”

 

“His dad had told him many times that the definition of a real man is one who cries without shame, reads poetry with his heart, feels opera in his soul, and does what’s necessary to defend a woman.”

 

“lot of times love doesn’t work out. Yet even when it fails, it connects you to others and, in the end, that is all you have, the connections.”

 

“How much do you trade to defeat loneliness?”

 

“Time ensures children never know their parents young.”

 

“Autumn leaves don’t fall, they fly. They take their time and wander on this their only chance to soar.”

 

My Take

I liked, but did not love, Where the Crawdads Sing.  I typically am a big fan of books where the main character overcomes a big hurdle by relying on themselves and others to learn what they are capable of.  This book has that in spades along with some well done courtroom scenes.  However, it was a bit too formulaic with an unearned, twist ending that keeps me from rating it higher.