Reviews with content warning for Racism - Where the Crawdads Sing

Okay I want to preface this by saying that I thought Delia Owen’s descriptive writing is a vibe, she can form a sentence for sure I enjoyed some of it (some of it I was rolling my eyes about but for the most part it was pretty)

I also want to say I did read this for book club, having already known about Delia Owen’s being wanted for questioning relating to a murder in Zambia (her ex-husbands son shot an alleged poacher in Zambia after the Owenses had set up a wildlife sanctuary with armed guards- please research this lmao) ANYWAY I went into it already biased against the book so do take that into account.

Didn’t like it tho. Kya felt very one dimensional for a very long time even though I wanted to like her she just felt very flat to me. I took issue with Jumpin’ in particular, as a character he felt…. Stereotypical? In a bad way? I get that it was the 50s and 60s in the South in this book and so there’s going to be racism but equally… you could have made your black character any kind of non-racist stereotype. Idk I am white and not American so may be reading into it a little bit it felt off to me??

Also I mentioned the whole (to Delia’s mind arguably justified) murder in Zambia, which she claims no knowledge of, but the murder plot really mirrors Delia’s own story and I’m not jazzed about it tbqh.

Idk not a fan. Probs very forgettable. Glad I read it for book club though, I get to see what the old ladies think about it 😂

Content Warnings

jaybird27's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

The story's detailed descriptions and multidimensional main character made a great start to my 2025 reading year. I'm a fan of mysteries and historical fiction, both genres that use mixed timelines a lot, and found this handled it particularly well. Would recommend.

Content Warnings

sayoni198's review against another edition

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medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

I began 2025 with a novel that I had bought 2 years ago but never read.
If a love story (a love story between a young girl and nature), a love letter to marshlands, a Bildungsroman, and a murder mystery could be perfectly packed into a novel, that would be: *Where The Crawdads Sing.*
Never have I read a story where the author breathes life and soul into every nonliving object like the lagoons, the sea, the rivulets, the shadows, and the mud, where the author gives life, personality, characteristic traits to nature more than to humans, to every tadpole, every firefly, every sea gull, every oak tree, every blade of grass, every heron, and every bird as if they are not artifacts to be conserved but a family, a community to be nurtured and live in coexistence with.
The novel explores the life of Kya, a girl who was abandoned by her whole family and grew up all alone in the marshlands and swamps of North Carolina, USA in the 1950s. She was isolated, neglected, and cast off by even the townspeople and labeled as the Marsh Girl or White trash. This made her learn how to survive on her own, make the gulls her family, and fend for herself for most of her childhood and youth. Human characters do have personalities in the novel yes, but they are mostly limited to the kind of impact (positive or negative, big or small) that they had on Kya. Or they were known by their professions or race or class. But it is the flora and fauna that play a role beyond as being the setting of the novel and are also the objective observer, witnesses to significant milestones of Kya's life, keeper of secrets, and a gateway or a glimpse to the world that *Delia Owens* (the author) has created for her readers.
Kya's complicated relationship with humanity goes beyond the Jungle Book-esque survival story of a girl literally raised by the marshlands. I say this because I have a special inclining for female survival stories because women, who are traumatized enough to expect nothing but abandonment from society and civilization, who no one imagines anything of who go on to do the things no one can imagine.
Where The Crawdads Sing is the story of such a woman.

Content Warnings