Tell Me What To Read - Where The Crawdads Sing

Welcome back to my series where I read and review what YOU request!

Today’s book was requested by @Mary Elizabeth

I read this book a few years ago before I really started my reading journey. I don’t really remember what spurned me to reading it. It might have been a book club honestly.

Goodreads description: For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet fishing village. Kya Clark is barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when the popular Chase Andrews is found dead, locals immediately suspect her.

But Kya is not what they say. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life's lessons from the land, learning the real ways of the world from the dishonest signals of fireflies. But while she has the skills to live in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world—until the unthinkable happens.

*Spoilers Ahead*

I won’t lie, this book starts off slow. I’m a naturally fast reader and this book took me the better part of a month to finish. Normally a book this size would take me no more than five days if I was reading it pretty slowly. But once it gets going, it really gets going.

The first half of Kya’s life is really heartbreaking. She’s ostracized from a community that she really does want to be a part of for things that aren’t her fault or any of her doing. But she is still resilient and strong throughout that. The fact that she doesn’t let her land get taken from her and that she manages to get herself a book deal and supports herself despite no one in town thinking she can amount to anything because she went to school for one day and then left is remarkable.

It does make me sad that her childhood trauma causes her to miss the relationship she has with Tate when it’s right in front of her and he clearly loves her so much. Her trauma causes her to jump into the arms of the walking red flag that is Chase Andrews and kickstarts the main situation that is his death, her trial, and all the pain that happens before and in between.

Not gonna lie, I was fooled the whole book, I thought Kya was innocent. I really thought the whole point was don’t judge a book by its cover because you’ll be wrong. Again, I read this before I really started my book journey, so I didn’t have the knowledge I have now. But I do actually love that Kya was the killer AND that she got away with it. So often in these kinds of books the killer is caught and we get everything wrapped up in a nice clean bow and the killer is someone bad and yada yada yada.

We all know how messed up the justice system can be and I know this is a book and that it can be written however the author wanted, but Kya getting away with it when the odds were NOT in her favor was really impressive to me. Especially because it’s not like she’s a serial killer or anything. She was assaulted and this man deserved what was coming to him. So all she did was take justice into her own hands because the justice system certainly wasn’t going to do that for her in that case.

Overall, I liked this book. I gave it five stars at the time. I would probably still agree with that assessment even though it does start off slow with a lot of build up because I felt that build up was kind of necessary to really get to know who each of the characters were and the role they were going to play in this mystery. Plus if it went too fast would you have rooted for Kya the way you did?

What do you think? Do you agree with my assessment?

Would you like to see me review any of your favorite books?

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