Where The Crawdads Sing is a beautiful coming-of-age story about a lonely, outcast girl in the marshes of North Carolina. Owens -a retired zoologist- wrote Where The Crawdads Sing partially as an ode to the hidden beauty of the marshes, a coming-of-age story, and a murder mystery. It truly does not fit into any category perfectly and it reflects in the book. Everything from her chapter layouts to her precise grammar makes sense for the story and creates a truly perfect storyline. 

The book starts out with the main character Kya growing up alone with her abusive father after her family abandoned her. Eventually, her father leaves as well. It was after this that the struggle of having to survive was thrust upon Kya. As time passes Kya learns to accept loneliness but eventually, she finds herself attracting two young men’s attention.  She learns about things she never could have in books. Things like love, heartbreak, tragedy, etc. Life’s all good in Barkley Cove until beloved Chase Andrews is murdered, Kya quickly finds herself swirling in a murder trial and dealing with the whole town turning against her even more - completely by herself. After all who would care about the Marsh Girl?

I’m not going to lie I have read this book more times than I would like to admit and every time I reread it I seem to find more things that I missed the first time I read it. That being said I also found some negatives that I didn’t love. The chapters often flip between Kya’s childhood and the murder trial, normally these don’t get confused but on a few occasions, I found myself having to reread pages because I didn’t understand what was happening in the story. 

There also was an addition of poetry. Throughout the book, Kya falls in love with a local poet's writings and applies them to many situations. While this addition of poetry isn’t necessarily negative it still doesn’t seem necessary. It doesn’t add much to the storyline and it was so unnecessary that when Crawdads was made into a movie the poetry did not make the cut and wasn’t included. All in all, my personal opinion Is that Where The Crawdads Sing is an inspiring and empowering story that will do a lot of good for a lot of people.