Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owns was released in 2018 to great acclaim. Consequently, I’ve heard praise for the novel for a few years now, but never read it. I added it to my ever-growing “To Be Read” list at the recommendation of just…so many people, but there were always different books that intrigued me. Crawdads was one of many books that I’d get around to reading “someday.”

And then: book club. Yes, the same small book club that forced me to read An Ember in the Ashes got back together. And, as you might have guessed, the first book we picked was Where the Crawdads Sing.

I am the type of person who dismisses popular things out of hand. When a lot of people praise something to high heaven, I tend to roll my eyes and stay away. Especially when it sounds like something that Facebook moms with “Live, Laugh, Love” wall art would be enamored by. However, I am trying to be less judgmental and open to new things, so I picked up Crawdads without complaint.

There was one through line I heard through all the praise the book received: that it was beautifully written. However, no one casually talking about the book ever seems to mention the characters or the plot. This worried me a bit. If you’ve read any of my other reviews, you’ll know that what really draws me into a story, more than anything, is the characters. Would this be a beautiful book, but devoid of emotion and characters I would actually care about? There was only one way to find out.

I have to agree with the same thing that everyone says: the prose is beautiful. It’s lush with description and metaphor, and is easily the novel’s strongest point. I wasn’t surprised when a movie based on the book was announced, but I had my doubts about how well it would work. Removing the narration is like removing the heart of the original work. Though I haven’t seen the movie myself, I think the many mixed and critical reviews show the importance of the actual writing in the book. The story suffers without it.

Looking beyond the beautiful prose, the plot can feel thin at times. For example, the book starts with the (probable) murder of Chase Andrews, a character that the protagonist, Kya, has been involved with. The investigation and Kya’s subsequent arrest feels more like a framing device for the story. Near the end of the novel, Kya is arrested and goes to trial after being arrested for Chase’s murder. Until that point, the murder mystery doesn’t feel fully integrating into Kya’s story.

The book uses an omniscient narrator, which I generally don’t like. Omniscient narrators make me feel like I’m looking at a character through a window, and not like I can connect with them or get in their heads. It felt like there was a lot of telling and not enough showing when it came to characters’ emotions.

She’d given love a chance; now she wanted simply to fill the empty spaces. Ease the loneliness while walling off her heart.

Over time, I grew to like it. Even though the narrator knows everything, it doesn’t give the whole story away. While the book opens with the mystery of Chase Andrews’s suspected murder, the reader doesn’t get an actual, final answer to the who-dun-it (if anyone dun it at all) until the final pages.

Considering the premise of the book – an abandoned girl living alone in a marsh for years – I expected this to be a survival narrative. A coming-of-age story in the style Island of the Blue Dolphins or Hatchet, perhaps. Especially after the book points out that it’s easy to find your dinner in a marsh, provided you didn’t mind digging up shellfish or fishing.

Kya observes and studies the marsh and great detail, and she relies on it for her survival, though not in the way I expected. For much of the novel she sells mussels, and uses the money she earns to buy groceries and supplies. She receives secondhand clothes from two characters, Jumpin’ and Mabel, who become parental figures to her. It is a survival story in that it’s about a girl living alone and in poverty, and raising herself to adulthood. While she does ultimately live off the land, it’s not in the direct way that I’d anticipated.

Towards the middle of the book, I realized, with growing horror, that this was a romance novel. Romance isn’t one of my favorite genres, but I usually like it as a B-plot. But this was no B-plot. The bulk of the book focuses on Kya’s romantic relationships with two boys from town, Tate and Chase.

I was a disappointed. I wanted Hatchet, but what I got was a banal love triangle. Kya falls in love with Tate, but he leaves her to go to college, and doesn’t come back into her life for years. Lonely and heartbroken, Kya lets herself fall for Chase.

A lot of the plot was predictable from here on out. Anyone who’s ever watched a romantic comedy could figure out what would happen next.

We know who Chase is from the start of the book. He’s a star quarterback in high school, which in fiction about a weird girl is usually synonymous with “asshole.” He comes from a prominent family in town who look down on people like Kya as “marsh trash.” He’s known to cheat on his partners, and even Kya understands that becoming romantically involved with him could be disastrous.

On the other hand, Tate is a nice, smart boy who loves and respects the marsh. He teaches Kya to read and helps open her to the wider world. Which of these two do you think she’s going to end up with? It’s not hard to figure out.

I really wasn’t that into the romance aspect of the novel until I saw it in a different light. Instead of a generic love story, Kya’s relationships with Tate and Chase could be read as an extended metaphor for humans’ relationships with the marsh. Chase sees the marsh as a thing to be used, either for hunting, fishing, or draining the water for land development. It’s much the same way as he treats Kya. She’s a curiosity, an exotic adventure, someone to bed for the bragging rights of having slept with the feral marsh girl. He uses Kya and discards her when she no longer suits his needs.

Like most people, Chase knew the marsh as a thing to be used, to boat and fish, or drain for farming, so Kya’s knowledge of its critters, currents, and cattails intrigued him. But he scoffed at her soft touch, cruising at slow speeds, drifting silently past deer, whispering at birds’ nests.

Tate loves the marsh for what it is. Where some people only see it as a swampy wasteland, Tate understands its intrinsic beauty. He dedicates his life to studying and protecting the marsh. Similarly, he doesn’t reject Kya out of hand as “marsh trash” as the other townspeople do. He appreciates Kya for who she is, and doesn’t try to tame or change her. He gives her the tools she needs to expand her world, and by doing so, helps protect her and the marsh.

Overall, I liked Where the Crawdads Sing well enough. I’m glad I kept an open mind about it, but it’s not a book I’d re-read. The plot as a bit thin and I didn’t always like the narrative style. Even so, the prose is excellent and the book can be read on a couple different levels. If you’re looking for a well-written, even relaxing book, this is for you. The audiobook also has a wonderful reader, Cassandra Campbell.

But I think I’ll stick with Hatchet and Grandma Gatewood’s Walk for now, thanks.