Review: Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

There has been a lot of buzz about this book by Delia Owens going back on two years now.  The book's protagonist is Catherine - but she goes by Kya and is known in her small town as "The Marsh Girl" - who has lived and grown up in the marshes of North Carolina alone since she was a small girl.  Kya didn't attend schools and was taught to read and do math by another local boy named Tate, who befriended her.  Intertwined with the story of Kya's life growing up without family, there is a murder mystery and, ultimately a trial to contend with.

Delia Owens is a trained zoologist and it shows in her descriptions of the marshes that Kya inhabits as well as the animals that Kya observes and writes about.  Owens' language and how she writes is so evocative and the story that she weaves combined with the language itself hooked me from the beginning.  I couldn't put the book down and it was one of those books that literally took me two days from start to finish to read simply because I had to read it. I felt like I was transported to the marshes of North Carolina's Outer Banks with Kya.

This was also one of the few books that have made me cry.  Kya has such a raw deal and a raw story and her abandonment by all those she cares for was just profoundly sad.  And yet, she managed to rise above it all and, to some degree, find her own success on her own terms.

This book is a must read and, while Owens isn't a trained novelist, I look forward to more novels from her.