Book Review | Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

Where the Crawdads Sing is a coming-of-age novel by Delia Owens.

A novel about a young woman determined to make her way in the wilds of North Carolina, and the two men that will break her isolation open.

For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. She's barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark.

But Kya is not what they say. Abandoned at age ten, she has survived on her own in the marsh that she calls home. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life lessons from the land, learning from the false signals of fireflies the real way of this world. But while she could have lived 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.

I am struggling with writing this review! Five star reads are either super easy to write or really hard. This one is really hard for me to capture and do it justice.

Where the Crawdads Sing caught my eye early in its publication, but I have a hard time fitting regular fiction into my genre lineup. Over the last year, I've seen more and more of my friends falling in love with this book. Thankfully my book club chose Where the Crawdads Sing as one of our monthly reads, and I finally fit it into the mix.

I see why so many people love this book. I'll be honest... the first half of this book I didn't see it. I was enjoying it, yes, but I really feared I was going to be the outlier who just didn't love it. At the halfway mark everything changed for me, and I could see it all by the end. I just needed to give it the room to grow.

Aside from loving the characters and the mystery, there was also science and poetry woven throughout Where the Crawdads Sing. I just loved this beautiful book, and I highly recommend it.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Book Review | Slade House by David Mitchell

Slade House is a horror novel by David Mitchell.

Keep your eyes peeled for a small black iron door.

Down the road from a working-class British pub, along the brick wall of a narrow alley, if the conditions are exactly right, you’ll find the entrance to Slade House. A stranger will greet you by name and invite you inside. At first, you won’t want to leave. Later, you’ll find that you can’t. Every nine years, the house’s residents—an odd brother and sister—extend a unique invitation to someone who’s different or lonely: a precocious teenager, a recently divorced policeman, a shy college student. But what really goes on inside Slade House? For those who find out, it’s already too late. . . .

Spanning five decades, from the last days of the 1970s to the present, leaping genres, and barreling toward an astonishing conclusion, this intricately woven novel will pull you into a reality-warping new vision of the haunted house story—as only David Mitchell could imagine it.

I'm a very skeptical reader. I will never be the kind of reader John Green wants me to be.

Going into Slade House, this line in the book description had me very apprehensive: "this intricately woven novel will pull you into a reality-warping new vision of the haunted house story—as only David Mitchell could imagine it." There is nothing greater than a haunted house story. What kind of new vision was I getting myself into?

I remained very unsure of the book through the first half of it, but then everything really fell into place for me.

The classic writing style was a perfect match for the scope of the story. Starting out in 1979 and ending up in present time, Slade House spans several decades. I normally don't care for big shifts in time, but it is brilliantly handled here.

In the end, I'm happy to say Slade House absolutely delivered on its promise of a "new vision of the haunted house story".

8/10: Great Read

Jennifer