Where the Crawdads sing

The marshes are bleak yet beautiful. The marshes know its residents.  The marshes can hide secrets. The marshes are alive.

By the time Kya was 10, she was left alone by everyone. At least by everyone she knew. Her only friend and family was the marsh. The marsh where she was born and where she raised herself. She was the child of the marshes, she walked on the wet soil which hid under the tide in the night, she lived under the canopy of willows and hovering gulls. The marshes taught her everything. The concept of life, the lesson of death, nature was her sole company.

That is until she runs into Tate Walker, the boy who had guided her through the water canals the first time she took the boat alone. Days pass and Tate joins her in the marshes, teaching her to read and to write.

But eventually Tate dissolves somewhere in her dreams and she is left alone again. With the marshes. Always with the marshes. She navigates her life through the ups and downs alone.

One day Chase Andrews is discovered dead in the marshes. The most popular man in the town has suddenly died and rumor has it that he was in a relationship with the marsh girl. But no one knows anything for sure. Because the marshes can hide secrets.

The book is beautifully written. Everything is written so elaborately that you can practically see everything on the curtain of the eyes. Still, it doesn’t feel as if the writer is dragging the story. The first paragraph is beautiful enough to grab your attention.

Written in form of two timelines, one narrating Kya’s life and other solving the possible murder of Chase Andrews, the book seems a bit tedious in the beginning. But once you get a hold of the story, it hooks you and you may end up reading it in a single sitting (like me).  The book holds many themes folded in its pages such as the power of self-reliance, the companionship of nature and the unnaturalness of human society. The story of the marsh girl and the two boys whose lives got tangled with hers, this book is labored with harsh truths and lies of the opinionated human society.

A best seller and now a movie, this book ahs won hearts of many. The movie is available on Netflix but I like the book better.

All in all, the reviews cannot do justice to the book. A coming-of-age story accompanied by an eerie mystery, I found the ending highly satisfying. And rewarding. It was a good book, a book worth reading. That’s all that matters in the end, I guess.