Where the Crawdads Sing

Where the Crawdads Sing

By: Delia Owens

I haven’t read many coming of age novels, but Where the Crawdads Sing was the pick for our book club for May and I had no idea what I was getting myself into.  Your heart goes out to the main character Kya right from the beginning.  Her family in disarray, her living conditions also completely pitiful but this story doesn’t focus on that.  Rather it talks about resilience.  The need to keep going to live, to thrive.  A young girl growing into adult hood and not by the help of her mother or sisters or aunts, but by nature.  You find everything from gulls to lightening bugs, fishing and digging for mussels.  The reader truly feels enveloped by the marsh and its inhabitants throughout this story. 

Kya goes on one emotional ride after the other and you can’t help but stay with her through her journeys of isolation.  How can one young person be so isolated but still have so much love in their heart?  We meet Tate early on and though we initially love him, he all people, makes his own mistakes.  I found it hard to forgive him but in the end found no other alternative.  Chase Andrews was the other guy we meet in this story, and I feel that we all have met a real life Chase at one time or another.  I absolutely hated him from the beginning to the end but loved that he was a character in this story because it needed him.  Our lives need a Chase Andrews so we can learn from them.  Most of us don’t find a perfect romance in the first love of our lives and instead we must be dealt a broken heart and learn how to put the pieces back together again and do our best to move on. 

So many other side characters in this novel, made this story so heartwarming and gut-wrenching all at the same time. Jumpin’ and Mabel are protectors I think we all wish we could have had and I don’t think I realized just how big Jumpin’s impact on Kya was until later in the story.  With touches on abandonment, isolation, survival, science, and love, Where the Crawdads Sing touched my heart in many different ways, with Kya taking a little piece of my heart along the way.

Salt To The Sea

Ruta Sepetys

Side Note:  Seriously guys, this author is talented and determined to share some of history's most well kept secrets. 

Goodreads Review:

Winter, 1945. Four teenagers. Four secrets.

Each one born of a different homeland; each one hunted, and haunted, by tragedy, lies…and war.

As thousands of desperate refugees flock to the coast in the midst of a Soviet advance, four paths converge, vying for passage aboard the Wilhelm Gustloff, a ship that promises safety and freedom.

Yet not all promises can be kept.

Inspired by the single greatest tragedy in maritime history, bestselling and award-winning author Ruta Sepetys (Between Shades of Gray) lifts the veil on a shockingly little-known casualty of World War II. An illuminating and life-affirming tale of heart and hope. 

My Feelings:

What an exhilarating read, or story in my case! I am almost tearing up just beginning this review because of how much this book has touched me.  How amazing this writer portrays WWII refugees.  With Ukranian in my blood , (grandmother was full Ukranian), I felt that this book spoke a little to me as well, though Ukranians weren’t spotlighted here, so many people of Europe were targeted.I have to mention that I didn’t actually read this, instead I listened to it on CD in my car, in thanks to my library!  My boss had told me I can rent audio books from the library, and to my amazement, she was right!  I had been hearing about this historical fiction on Twitter and seeing many pics of the book on Instagram and something kept telling me to look into this one.  

I read the back cover and was sold.  I’ve always been a sucker for history on WWII but to listen to an audio version of a historical based YA fiction version, reached out to me and did not want to let me go.  So I picked it up and couldn’t stop.  The narrators of the book are phenomenal, although there is one of the four characters that just irked my nerves from the beginning and rightfully so!  I’m pretty sure Ruta meant for him to be that way, or at least I hope she did.  

Ruta’s world building is professionally done to say the least!  She knows how to write and completely engulfed me into this time period!  She created each character flawlessly.  Their back stories really helped the reader to get to know them and why they acted and thought the way they did.  With a more sorrowful tone throughout this read (as is expected) one might think, it would be depressing or melancholy at points.  But the history that backs up her characters stories, opens your eyes into the past!  At times you feel sad because this stuff really happened to people!  

Everything from the weather, to the sausages, to the expressions of a Nazi’s face, was so expertly written that once I began listening, I was there.  I was with Joana walking and with Emelia, looking at her pink hat.  I was with Florian as he fought to hold onto his own direction and not waiver even for a second.  I was with Alfred even if I didn’t want to be!! 

One of the best books I’ve ever read/listened to in my life!  I never knew that I loved historical fiction until now and I am so beyond grateful that I took a chance on my intuition and devoured this read.  For educational reasons, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in WWII and what the life of a refugee was like.  For a YA who wants to read something different, something worthwhile, something meaningful, this is the book for you!  

I could go on and on and on if I could give you details, but obviously I can’t be a party pooper!  As a YA reader, a strongly urge you to give this a try and I promise you won’t regret it!

One of the Best Historical Fiction Novels I've Ever Read!

You Will Not Regret Reading This One

Between Shades of Gray

Ruta Sepetys

Goodreads Review: 

It's 1941 and fifteen-year-old artist Lina Vilkas is on Stalin's extermination list. Deported to a prison camp in Siberia, Lina fights for her life, fearless, risking everything to save her family. It's a long and harrowing journey and it is only their incredible strength, love, and hope that pull Lina and her family through each day. But will love be enough to keep them alive?

My Feelings:

Where to begin with this masterpiece?  

This historical fiction based on a tremendous disaster of imprisoning people in Europe and forcing them into slavery to work the lands of Russia, caused by Joseph Stalin was written delicately and expertly.  

Not a moment went by while reading, that I felt anything other than captivated.  I was there with Lina. 17 year old Lithuanian who was forced onto a train car with her family without even a hint of what was happening or where she was being taken.  Sepetys put me in the train cars in that moment.  The descriptive words used really drew me in and held on tight.  I could smell the smells.  I could hear the crying.

  Tears fell down my cheeks as I read through the harsh conditions these innocent people were forced to bare.  Sepetys brilliantly highlights some of the deepest secrets of Stalin’s deadly war path.

It’s hard to imagine that anyone could build friendships or even relationships during such a trying time, but that’s precisely what had happened.  Her characters come to life on the pages and and place you in that time, at those camps, starving with them.  Wishing you could reach your hand through the book and into the past and give them extra water, food and clothes.  All the while, reading that some of these victims still had kept forgiveness in their hearts for their captors and held onto this false hope of ever being released.

What’s most important to me, while reading a historical fiction, is that these fictional characters are based off of real people in real situations that had no outs, no escapes.  If anyone is looking to be completely and fully enveloped by a book, Between Shades of Gray is that book for you.