Where the Crawdads Sing: Review

Overview:

To start off, Where the Crawdads Sing is written by Delia Owens, who before writing this "murder mystery" wrote environmental author. So, when she came out with this book it was a surprise to many as it was out of her norm, but I think her background in writing helped her tremendously as the imagery used in this novel to create scenes is demonstrated on an expert level. Initially I found myself captivated by this novel as the first hundred pages kept me fully engaged, but after that, I found it to be a lack luster romance/triumph novel which did not fit what was set up at the beginning of this book. Owens was able to do a lot of good things with this book, but as I continued reading, I found that there were also some bad things that started coming through the cracks. Now lets dive in.

The Good...

First off, we have the imagery and description skills of Owens. As stated above, the fact that Owens was an environmental writer before writing this book greatly benefited her. The novel is set off the coast of North Carolina, which is a very green and beautiful place. I lived there for a while when I was in the military, and loved the lush green trees, the beautiful rivers that just seem to flow so effortlessly throughout the state. So, going into this book knowing that, I was very excited for how well the setting was going to be described. Owens often goes into grave detail about the setting and how easily it is to get lost in the North Carolina marshes, how small some of the towns are, and how dirty the coast can truly be. Those are just a few examples of what was described throughout the book. Later on in the novel, it seems as though Owens may have used this as a way to fill the novel and create pages as some chapters are entirely about the setting and there is no real progression throughout the plot. 

Secondly, we have the description of characters. The main character in the novel is Kya, a shy uneducated "marsh girl" as the local town people refer to her. Kya, her siblings, and her parents as well as other key characters are described in great detail, such great detail you actually feel as though you know them. I was very impressed that Owens was able to describe the characters in such great detail as this type of description are not her forte, but she does an amazing job and I applaud her for that.

Lastly, we have the character development. Now I know that the last point and this could be considered one in the same, but I wanted to separate them as the character descriptions do not really play into the character development for anyone but Kya in the novel. Now as the story goes on we find Kya meeting a vast amount of people and we are shown on a small scale how each character develops. Again I was impressed with this as Owens background is not in linear character development. 

The Bad...

First off we have the plot. I have a lot of issues with the plot in this book. First one being the fact that this book was marketed as a "murder mystery." And that does exist in the book, however the amount of the murder and investigation surrounding it takes up about an eighth of the book. The rest of the novel is spent following Kya and her encounters. Now Owens does try to make the murder part of the book relevant by saying that Kya knew Chase Andrews (the victim) and connect the two plot lines together. But this is done in a poor manner and the book reflects that in the often confusing and unrelated time lines. My second issue with the plot is the fact that we never see Kya have a triumphant comeback that most people who have read the book wanted. We see her labeled as the "marsh girl" and she never gets rid of this title, and no attempt is made to make her become a victorious character, meaning that the plot as a whole is rather repetitive as Kya continues to do the same thing her whole life, with the exception of a few romantic encounters that she has towards the end of the book. 

Next, we have Kya's relationship with her family. I understand that families falling apart is a real and very tragic thing, but there are some things about this that just don't make sense. At the very beginning of the book, we see that Kya's mother (known as Ma) leaves the family and the next few chapters are about how Ma used to cook and take care of the house, with Kya trying to emulate these daily routines that he mother followed. Then we have Kya's brother, who as a reader, I was rooting for as he appeared to be the one that was going to look after Kya and help her progress through life. But at the age of twelve, he ends up leaving and never coming back, eventually fading out of Kya's memory all together. Then we have Pa, Kya's father. Pa is made out to be the bad guy from the first few pages as he is a violent, alcoholic, war veteran. Pa is the reason that Ma left, after he hit her. All of these are very real things, but one thing I don't understand is why no one ever came back to check on her or to take care of her. Kya often goes to the grocery store and gas station at the age of six, yet no one seems to care that she's walking miles and miles? Not even the people of the town. And when Kya stopped going to school after the first day, the school made efforts to keep her going, but she always eluded them. Did social services not exist? Where was the Sheriff to come enforce her going to school?

Lastly, we have the dialog. This is my biggest complaint about the book. The way that the dialog is done has it perks as all characters do not speak correctly and cannot spell correctly and Owens does put the grammatical errors in the dialog in the form of misspelled words. But the dialog as a whole is not great. The communication between characters is simple and rather dull. I do know that this is a book about an uneducated person, but even in the chapters about the murder of Chase, the dialog is weak and predictable. I give Owens a lot of credit for what she tried to do, but she went down with her sword swinging. 

Conclusion:

I would not put this book on my DNR list, but I personally thought that it was a rather weak book. Had we seen better development and more incorporation of the murder with Kya's story, I think that this would have been a lot better. I give Owens a lot of credit for what she tried to do as she almost made it happen, but at the end of the day, this was just okay to me. Let me know what you think!