alobear | Where The Crawdads Sing

A fair few people recommended this book to me - Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens - and one or two expressed less positive reactions. I finally got around to it this week. It tells the story of Kya, gradually abandoned by her family to survive alone in a shack in the marsh from about the age of ten. The telling of Kya's backstory (1952-1969) is intercut with a police investigation of a body found in the marsh in 1969, and the two storylines come together in a 100-page courtroom drama that takes up the last quarter of the book.

The prose is engrossing, the setting very strong, and Kya makes for an intriguing and engaging character. Her young adulthood takes an unexpected direction and the exploration of the possible murder as presented by both sides in the trial is very interesting.

I really wasn't sure what to think about the very end, though. And, the more I think about it, the more annoyed I get. It's a masterful example of reader manipulation and I can appreciate the cleverness of the writing from a technical standpoint - but it doesn't stop me from feeling manipulated. The way the story is put together prompts your brain to think about certain characters in certain ways (because of the standard tropes of storytelling) and then the rug is pulled out. But I have to admit the clues were there - I just wasn't looking for them, so perhaps the book is right in making me feel foolish...

I can't help being annoyed, though, which is a shame after thinking so highly of the book and really enjoying it up to the point.