Where The Crawdads Sing Review

Hey readers! I read this book way back in the December of last year or something but I couldn’t review it at the time. Nevertheless, I have it here now. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. Delia Owens is a zoologist and Where The Crawdads Sing is her debut and only novel. She is an extremely proficient nature writer and efficiently grasps the intricacies of a scenery in her writing.

The book is primarily about Kya, a young scrawny girl, and about how she manages to live in a ramshackle shack in the marsh, all alone. The shack, that was initially occupied by all the members of Kya’s family, was abandoned and left to Kya alone. Having never attended school, Kya always felt ostracised from human society and didn’t have any friends except the marsh and its non-human inhabitants. Kya’s seemingly tedious life takes a sudden turn when a young boy by the name of Chase Andrews is found dead in the quiet town of Barkley Cove in 1969. Rumours of the ‘Marsh Girl’ had haunted the town for years and Chase Andrews’s demise immediately let to Kya becoming the lead suspect in the case. The marsh had become a crime scene. A harmless girl whose only companions were seagulls was deemed capable of doing such a heinous act by the whole town.

Another key factor in the plot was the interest of two boys in Kya’s life. Two major aspects of the story are the events in Kya’s life and the narrative of the ongoing police investigation in the Chase Andrews murder. While this book is being widely-acclaimed, I, on the other hand, found it to be a very mediocre read. The plot of the book was quite predictable and the whodunnit aspect of it made the book very cliche. The book also involves heavy use of poetry. Being an amateur poetry reader myself, I think that might be one of the reasons that I couldn’t appreciate it as much as other people did. I think poetry readers will find this book quite interesting.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Happy reading, Sidh.