Review: Where The Crawdads Sing

If there is one thing that I have come to learn over months and months of reading and blogging, it's that that Reese's Book Club has some of the best picks. I kind of think that it's an awesome coincidence that Reese Witherspoon is the producer for the movie adaptation of this book and it's a pick for her book club. It might not be a coincidence but I think it's awesome.

For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet fishing village. Kya Clark is barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when the popular Chase Andrews is found dead, locals immediately suspect her.

But Kya is not what they say. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life's lessons from the land, learning the real ways of the world from the dishonest signals of fireflies. But while she has the skills to live in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world—until the unthinkable happens.

QUICK THOUGHTS AND REVIEW: 5/5, BEAUTIFUL, AMAZING, HEART TOUCHING.  

Possible Trigger Tags:

1. Isolation

2. Mentions of domestic abuse

3. Mentions of rape

4. Abandonment

WHAT DID I FEEL ABOUT THE  BOOK'S: 

1. Writing Quality: The writing quality is of like a love child between classics and contemporary. While classics have this certain quality to keep a reader piqued while retaining a mystery around them, they spend wholeass pages trying to describe what the furniture looked like in a room. On the other hand contemporary novels, the writing style is smooth, more efficient, the English is easier to understand, but the concept of the vibe or feeling of mystery is often fleeting and hard to grasp. And I like that this style contains the best of both worlds. It's interesting and has this mystery vibe all around, but it doesn't take fucking 5 pages to describe what the furniture looked like. And I love that about it.

2. Image/ Illustration Quality: The story is set in a swamp marsh in 1969 North Carolina, well basically Berkeley Cove in North Carolina. I really don't know much of the place, but I saw the movie trailer and it was kind of easier to figure out what the setting was and what everything looked like and I really loved the fact that Daisy Edgar-Jones is playing the role of Kya because it fits her so damn well. The writing did create an image inside my head and the movie trailer enhanced it for me, so yeah, the illustration is awesome in a sense.

3. Character Development: Kya is now my comfort character. And I'd love to wrap her up in a small blanket for what she's been through. People have left her ever since she was a small child and instead of seeking for help, she has learnt to fend for herself on her own. Well, she couldn't have asked for help to be honest. Everyone in the town had singled her and her family out for being people of colour and for being from a place that wasn't in the norms. People just refused to see past their own prejudices and just see Kya for what she was, a little girl, with little to call her own in the world, someone who needed care and nourishment. And it's sad because Kya deserved everything just like every other child in that town.

Tate Walker, he could be described as the stereotypical boy who'd fallen in love with a girl and left her after he left the town but couldn't afford to forget her. But I think he can be credited as a real man because he's the one who treats Kya like a person unlike everyone else who treats her like a nobody. He teaches her how to read without judging and is patient with her throughout all the stages in her life. Also when he comes back after almost finishing his undergraduate and tells her he loves her it is kind of romantic because these days, finding a man who has loved a woman after all these years is something. God, why did you stop making men like Tate Walker?

Chase Andrews is a bastard and he deserved to die.

4. Couldn't put it down- Ness: 10/10, basically un-put-down-able. Simply, it just kept me going and going, I'll defend this book till the end of time.

5. Intellectual Depth: The book is basically what years of isolation and people leaving you can do to you. I do not blame Kya for what she has become but instead I support her and I respect her for the woman that she becomes. Years and years of isolation and heartbreak just taught her that she had to fight for everything on her own. She was so used to living alone and so used to being harassed whenever she went out in public that she felt uncomfortable being out there. I think it developed a certain level of social anxiety within her and that's completely fair. Due to the lack of people around her, she comes closer to the nature that most people avoid. She gets to know about the wildlife and the world around her without as Tate says "any layer in between".

6. Plot: The plot is telling us the story of Kya Clark, also known as the "marsh girl" throughout her life, is convicted for the death of Chase Andrews, someone that she had been with earlier in her life. I keep calling her Kya because, to be honest, using her real name feels like disrespect on my part because first of all, Kya is such a wonderful name, and second, Catherine sounds like such a delicate name it doesn't cover half of what Kya has endured through. HALF, I say. Throughout the whole book, the story narrates the past and the present, both Kya's life before and after Chase Andrews is found in the swamp. Both stories, equally interesting and intriguing. And let me tell you, the court trial almost broke my heart because Kya didn't deserve to be treated the way that she did. She really didn't. 

OVERALL, AN AWESOME READ, y'all be missing out on the good stuff.