Book Review: Where the Crawdads Sing (2018), by Delia Owens

This is probably not a book I would've gotten hip to on my own, for whatever reason; however, a friend recommended it earlier this summer. I've since found out it's sort of the "it" book of the summer, the beach read everyone is talking about or has at least heard about. And by everyone, I mean women I know who read fiction. I have yet to meet a male who has read this book or intends to read it. But that has nothing to do with the words on the page, and I digress...

Where the Crawdads Sing takes place on the coast of rural North Carolina and spans about 15 years from the mid-50s to 1970, mostly centering on the life of main character Kya Clark, aka "The Marsh Girl." Starting from when her mother leaves the family, in her early childhood, Kya's family one-by-one abandons her until she's left alone, at age 10, to raise herself in the family's shack by an isolated and remote section of marsh. Through the years, Kya has interactions with locals from the nearby back-water town of Barkley Cove, culminating in at least one ill-fated romance that ends in (cue the mysterious music)...a murder!

Just from a reader-experience standpoint, I got into this book very fast and was on-board with the story until a little after 2/3 of the way in, when it started to sag big-time and I almost didn't finish it. The whole story sort of "buckled under its own weight," in my opinion, meaning the author created such a fantastic world and such a wonderful main character, that there was almost no way for the book's resolution to live up to it. I feel like I could sense this coming and, if I weren't going through a phase of castigating myself for not finishing more books that I start, I'd probably have abandoned this one.

I guess I'm glad I stuck with it. The epilogue was actually quite touching, leading me to wonder if, sometimes, some books are just all preface to the Epilogue, and what would happen if someone wrote an entire book that was an Epilogue. Also, I can see why this book makes a great "beach read." It's easy to read, has a pretty straightforward plot you can keep track of while baking in the sun, and it is not going to cause you to run to the dictionary, make you wish you were smarter than you are, or cause you the kind of intellectual distress which will in any way interfere with your margaritas on the dock later.

Will you come away from this book having learned any grandiose lessons on life, or with any philosophical observations lodged deep in your mind for years to come? Doubt it. But hey, fiction doesn't necessarily need to do that to be entertaining or carry you away for a handful of hours. In fact sometimes it's better if it doesn't. Will I ever re-read this book or spend another millisecond analyzing it? That's a virtually guaranteed No.