Where the Crawdads Sing

I thought it must be over-hyped. I couldn't fathom why this book was still everywhere, years after it was released. It's a bit of a phenomenon in publishing, I read last night, that a book still has this kind of sales and momentum so long after its initial release.

Still, I hadn't read it.

A million people told me I should read it, which usually means I don't want to read it (the title of this book admits my book snobbery, friends, you knew what you were getting into here.) Also, southern fiction is a powerful genre and I read a lot of it. For some reason, the title of this book felt reductive to me. So, again, I resisted.

Finally, a wonderful friend literally dropped it on my doorstep (along with homemade cookies, by the the way) and I gave in, finally reading the book everyone told me I had to read.

Now that I'm the other side?

It's complicated.

I will acknowledge that I had a bias going in. I was skeptical, as you've read, so I had a "prove it" attitude from page one. Right away, I didn't like the way the southern dialect was written. Was it wrong? No, I don't think so. It just felt a little heavy-handed. It took me awhile to get over that, and for some reason, that writing seemed to dissipate over the course of the book. Maybe that was intentional, as our protagonist Kya becomes more educated. But, either way, that was an initial turnoff.

Once I moved past that, the story was, in fact, fascinating to read. A little girl, abandoned by her family to live alone in a shack in the North Carolina marsh. She learned to fend completely for herself and eventually found a couple of people she could trust to help her learn to read, stay clothed, make a little money, etc. Over the years, nearly everyone she trusted abandoned her. The people in the town nearby treated her like a pariah, a side show act, etc. All the while, Kya was building a life for herself, collecting treasures from the nature that was all around her. She falls in love, is left again and eventually begins a relationship with a man who keeps her a secret out in the marsh. When something happens to him, she's the prime suspect and has to rely on strangers for her own future.

I don't think I gave anything away there; if the publishers' numbers are right, most of the country has read this already anyway! But, that's the gist.

The story is interesting and the writing has its moments. Sometimes, it's beautiful and poetic, other times, it reminds me of a teenage girl writing love letters with a thesaurus. It definitely kept my interest, but didn't blow me away. I feel like pieces of the story, I've read before. There are a lot of similarities, in fact, to Giver of Stars, though the setting is different.)

Did I like it? Sure. It kept my interest and told an interesting story. But, I thought the characters were stereotypical and I was not surprised by the "twist" revealed at the end. The bow was wrapped up a little too predictably, if I'm being honest. I'm glad I finally read it - and, I'm glad no one has to try to convince me again to do so.