Where the Crawdads Sing

By Delia Owens

Exquisite and wild voice

This is a beautifully written book. It’s difficult to pin down into a single genre: part-murder mystery, part-love story and part coming-of-age it tells the story of a lonely, lovely girl named Kya who grows up in the marshlands of North Carolina abandoned by her family.

When years later a boy who’d pursued her is found dead, she becomes a suspect in his accidental death. Since it’s a debut novel, it gives me even more admiration for the exquisite language that turns the marsh’s natural life into a character itself. Now a new favorite of mine: I’ve been rereading it to underline passages.