Reviews with content warning for Sexual violence - Where the Crawdads Sing

Reviews tagging 'Sexual violence'

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

304 reviews

tripleshoticedmocha's review against another edition

adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious sad 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? Yes

5.0

OH MY GOSH I LOVE THIS BOOK you absolutely need to read this, it is a book everyone should read, like even if you don’t like reading you will like to read this. I sat down and read like 200 pages in a couple of hours and I had to make myself stop and get other stuff done because I was so hooked on the story. Definitely a book to add to your tbr

Content Warnings

emilypolcyn's review against another edition

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mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I had a lot of problems with the dialect in this book — the inaccuracies, the classism (only “bad” or “stupid” characters have a dialect, and once someone becomes educated or good they lose the accent), the racism (white lady failing pretty hard at writing AAVE in the 60s). Plus the prose would occasionally have dialect (like saying “likker” instead of “liquor”) but inconsistently and seemingly for no real reason? Not sure what that choice was but it always threw me out of it.

Very flowery writing but also was kind of giving thesaurus.com… and lots of small details about nature and food that interrupt the action without contributing anything thematically (besides that nature is beautiful and they’re in the south, which, yeah). If she mentioned grits one more time…

Also weak character development + characters who say every thought they’re having out loud (also in well-articulated prose) (unless they’re dumb and poor)

I think this really picked up during the court sequence (which I genuinely was interested in and a bit hooked by) but then slowed down again and got detached at the end. But maybe that’s just because Owens was referring to her own connection to a murder trial (which I only heard about after finishing this book and oh my god…. That lady for sure killed someone)

Spoiler

Rolled my eyes SO hard at the Amanda Hamilton reveal… like omg no way this clunky bad poetry that’s been shoehorned into random scenes the whole book was actually ~her~ the ~whole time~ wow I am so shocked

Also weird sex scenes?? And every single time she gets close to having sex she uses the phrase “circling her nipple”. Literally happened like four times 🥴

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reemoony's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

before anything else, fuck delia owens. now, this was genuinely the best book ive read this year. it sucked me in on the first page and kept me there. following kya from her childhood all the way to adulthood become my favorite activity for a week.

Content Warnings