Where the Crawdads Sing is my favourite read of 2024 so far and Kya, The Marsh Girl, is one of my favourite fictional female characters of all time. Haunting and endearing, artistic and intelligent, resilient and resourceful, bewitching and vulnerable, she’s one of a kind.

Kya’s story is told across different timelines, starting in 1952 when she is just 6 years old, flipping forwards to 1969 when the body of handsome, athletic and popular Chase Andrews is found beneath the rickety old fire tower in the marshes and then to and fro, following her life in stages leading up to his mysterious death and beyond.

I love that Where the Crawdads Sing is so many different things.
It’s a beautifully lyrical, highly descriptive study of the natural world, the flora and fauna of the North Carolina coastline, Kya’s home
It’s a murder mystery set in a small, close-knit community where everybody knows everybody else’s business and folks of colour and marsh dwellers are alienated, accused and discriminated against.
It’s Kya’s coming-of-age story, a story of loss and abandonment, abuse and neglect, strength and survival, loneliness and longing. A feral, hand-to-mouth existence, a symbiotic relationship with nature, evading the authorities and trusting nobody.
It’s a moving love story.

Where the Crawdads Sing has left me with a lasting, kaleidoscopic image of Kya, spinning around, arms outstretched with flocks of gulls flapping and eddying around her, creating a feathered forcefield to protect her from the outside world. With a lump in my throat, I was rooting for Kya every step of the way, welling up at the acts of kindness from Jumpin’, Mabel and Tate. Kya, the bogs, swamps and marshes, the grits, pokes and crawdads will stay with me for a very long time. I cannot rate this book highly enough. ( )

The perfect novel? Perhaps. It's got something for everyone: a coming-of-age story about a young friendless girl, Kya, abandoned by her family and siblings, who has to make her own way in the world as 'Marsh girl', living in a shack on the shoreline. It's a mystery story. Though this element unfolds slowly, once it developed, it had me gripped until the very last page. It's beautifully evocative nature writing too, informed yet lyrical, capturing the soul of a North Carolina marshland shoreline rich in bird and other wildlife.

This is a book about Kya herself, and about the community where she grew up in the 1950s and 60s, with its racial divisions (Colored Town is on the outskirts). None of the other characters ever moves as centre stage as Kya herself, but Tate and Chase, who at different times date her, as well as her protector, storekeeper Jumpin' and his wife are convincingly portrayed.

Over a seventeen year period, the book alternates between Kya's early childhood and her young adulthood. As a child she has to contend with her absent mother's disappearance, a drunken inadequate father, and learn how to fend for herself. As an adult she learns that friends, lovers - and she has few enough - can't always be trusted. The mystery, unveiled in the book's prologue, unfolds only in the latter part of the book, but is satisfyingly absorbing edge-of-the-seat stuff.

Perhaps the last pages were just a little too neat, and resolved just a little bit too easily so many of Kya's difficulties of trust and relating to fellow-humans. But surely she deserved to live happily-ever-after?

This book seems to demand to be made into a film: it's a highly pictorial book whose scenes I found easy to visualise. An unusual and convincing story, beautifully written. ( )

This book had me hooked at the prologue—no buried lead here. Coming straight out of a different book that took several weeks because it was SO slow to get into, this was especially refreshing.

This. Book. Though. The prose is pure poetry (but then as an added bonus, there’s also *actual* poetry). I got lost (in the best immersive way, not in a confused way) amid the vivid descriptions of the setting. I found myself reacting out loud to the power of the words at activating my senses. Seriously, when a book makes you go, “Mmm!” out loud and it’s not describing delicious food, that’s just plain good writing.

And then the way the story unfolded between timelines, closing in on itself as more was revealed—just brilliantly done. I didn’t want to put it down. This is one of those stories that sticks with you for a while after finishing it, echoing through your mind like memories of something you experienced firsthand. I hope to find many more books that have the same effect. ( )

1952
The morning burned so August-hot, the marsh's moist breath hung the oaks and pines with fog. The palmetto patches stood unusually quiet except for the low, flap of the heron's wings lifting from the lagoon. And then, Kya, only six at the time, heard the screen door slap. Standing on the stool, she stopped scrubbing grits from the pot and lowered it into the basin of worn out suds. No sounds now but her own breathing. Who had left the shack? Not Ma. She never let the door slam.

Beautiful story! Very well written, wonderful characters, great twists at the end...overall I really enjoyed this book. ( )