Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens

I sometimes worry that I won’t ‘get’ books which have been hyped up, and I put this one off because of this reason, but oh my goodness it was incredible.

From the very first chapter I felt like I was watching a captivating movie, the imagery in this book is so vivid and it has the most beautiful descriptions of nature and the marshlands in which it is set. Sometimes I have to try quite hard to imagine things when I’m reading, but this was so effortlessly visual for me.

There are two separate timelines within the book, and it jumps around between them. The first is the background and story of the main character, Kya. The second is the murder investigation of a local young man. It is a murder mystery story, but it is much more than that too.

I felt deeply invested in certain characters in the book, and was routing for them so hard by the end. The book shows the very best and the very worst of human nature, and actually made me cry (out of sadness and because of the kind actions of some of the characters).

How dyslexia-friendly is it?

Even though some of the characters have multiple names/nicknames, I never found myself getting confused between them because they are introduced slowly and well throughout the book. Although there were a few nature terms throughout the book that I didn’t know what they meant (like what a crawdad is) I just googled them and it made perfect sense. As I’ve already mentioned, I found this book to be really effortless to read and it did feel like I was watching a film!

Book aesthetic - all photos are from Unsplash