Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life--until the unthinkable happens.

Review:
I'm often skeptical when a book receives such wide acclaim, worried that it won't live up to the hype for me when I read it. I need not have worried with this one - I loved it! The prose was lyrical, painting vivid, living pictures for me of an environment I have never seen, and the story was compelling. Kya's experience of the natural world around her drives the story just as it drives her own life's course; I've never seen this kind of marshland but it came alive in Owens' telling so that I felt like I was there with Kya. For much of the book I actually felt physically nervous, afraid for Kya and for her home, sure that something terrible was about to happen. Instead, the author resists those tropes to tell a quiet, sometimes romantic, sometimes shocking, utterly absorbing tale about one young woman's life, loves, and dreams. This book is a must read, I highly recommend it!