movie review for where the crawdads sing

Where the Crawdads Sing

The cicadas buzz and the moss drips and the sunset casts a golden shimmer on the water every single evening. But while “Where the Crawdads Sing” is rich in atmosphere, it’s sorely lacking in actual substance or suspense.

Maybe it was an impossible task, taking the best-selling source material and turning it into a cinematic experience that would please both devotees and newbies alike. Delia Owens ’ novel became a phenomenon in part as a Reese Witherspoon book club selection; Witherspoon is a producer on “Where the Crawdads Sing,” and Taylor Swift wrote and performs the theme song, adding to the expectation surrounding the film’s arrival.

But the result of its pulpy premise is a movie that’s surprisingly inert. Director Olivia Newman , working from a script by Lucy Alibar , jumps back and forth without much momentum between a young woman’s murder trial and the recollections of her rough-and-tumble childhood in 1950s and ‘60s North Carolina. (Alibar also wrote “ Beasts of the Southern Wild ,” which “Where the Crawdads Sing” resembles somewhat as a story of a resourceful little girl’s survival within a squalid, swampy setting.)

It is so loaded with plot that it ends up feeling superficial, rendering major revelations as rushed afterthoughts. For a film about a brave woman who’s grown up in the wild, living by her own rules, “Where the Crawdads Sing” is unusually tepid and restrained. And aside from Daisy Edgar-Jones ’ multi-layered performance as its central figure, the characters never evolve beyond a basic trait or two.

We begin in October 1969 in the marshes of fictional Barkley Cove, North Carolina, where a couple of boys stumble upon a dead body lying in the muck. It turns out to be Chase Andrews, a popular big fish in this insular small pond. And Edgar-Jones’ Kya, with whom he’d once had an unlikely romantic entanglement, becomes the prime suspect. She’s an easy target, having long been ostracized and vilified as The Marsh Girl—or when townsfolk are feeling particularly derisive toward her, That Marsh Girl. Flashbacks reveal the abuse she and her family suffered at the hands of her volatile, alcoholic father ( Garret Dillahunt , harrowing in just a few scenes), and the subsequent abandonment she endured as everyone left her, one by one, to fend for herself—starting with her mother. These vivid, early sections are the most emotionally powerful, with Jojo Regina giving an impressive, demanding performance in her first major film role as eight-year-old Kya.

As she grows into her teens and early 20s and Edgar-Jones takes over, two very different young men shape her formative years. There’s the too-good-to-be-true Tate (Taylor John Smith ), a childhood friend who teaches her to read and write and becomes her first love. (“There was something about that boy that eased the tautness in my chest,” Kya narrates, one of many clunky examples of transferring Owens’ words from page to screen.) And later, there’s the arrogant and bullying Chase ( Harris Dickinson ), who’s obviously bad news from the start, something the reclusive Kya is unable to recognize.

But what she lacks in emotional maturity, she makes up for in curiosity about the natural world around her, and she becomes a gifted artist and autodidact. Edgar-Jones embodies Kya’s raw impulses while also subtly registering her apprehension and mistrust. Pretty much everyone lets her down and underestimates her, except for the kindly Black couple who run the local convenience store and serve as makeshift parents (Sterling Macer Jr. and Michael Hyatt , bringing much-needed warmth, even though there’s not much to their characters). David Strathairn gets the least to work with in one of the film’s most crucial roles as Kya’s attorney: a sympathetic, Atticus Finch type who comes out of retirement to represent her.

This becomes especially obvious in the film’s courtroom scenes, which are universally perfunctory and offer only the blandest cliches and expected dramatic beats. Every time “Where the Crawdads Sing” cuts back to Kya’s murder trial—which happens seemingly out of nowhere, with no discernible rhythm or reason—the pacing drags and you’ll wish you were back in the sun-dappled marshes, investigating its many creatures. ( Polly Morgan provides the pleasing cinematography.)

What actually ends up happening here, though, is such a terrible twist—and it all plays out in such dizzyingly speedy fashion—that it’s unintentionally laughable. You get the sensation that everyone involved felt the need to cram it all in, yet still maintain a manageable running time. If you’ve read the book, you know what happened to Chase Andrews; if you haven’t, I wouldn’t dream of spoiling it here. But I will say I had a variety of far more intriguing conclusions swirling around in my head in the car ride home, and you probably will, too.

Now playing in theaters.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series “Ebert Presents At the Movies” opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

Daisy Edgar-Jones as Catherine 'Kya' Clark
Taylor John Smith as Tate Walker
Harris Dickinson as Chase Andrews
Michael Hyatt as Mabel
Sterling MacEr Jr. as Jumpin'
David Strathairn as Tom Milton
Garret Dillahunt as Pa
Eric Ladin as Eric Chastain
Ahna O’Reilly as Ma
Jojo Regina as Young Kya
Alan Edward Bell

Writer (based upon the novel by)

Delia Owens
Lucy Alibar
Mychael Danna
Olivia Newman

Cinematographer

Polly Morgan

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‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ Review: The Bestselling Novel Turned Into a Compelling Wild-Child Tale

Daisy Edgar-Jones plays Kya, the venerable Marsh Girl, in a mystery as dark as it is romantic.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

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Sometimes a movie will turn softer than you thought it would — more sunny and upbeat and romantic, with a happier ending. Then there’s the kind of movie that turns darker than you expect, with an ominous undertow and an ending that kicks you in the shins. “ Where the Crawdads Sing ” is the rare movie that conforms to both those dynamics at once.

Adapted from Delia Owens ’ debut novel, which has sold 12 million copies since it was published in 2018, the movie is about a young woman whose identity is mired in physical and spiritual harshness. Kya Clark ( Daisy Edgar-Jones ) has grown up all by herself in a shack on a marshy bayou outside Barkley Cove, N.C. When we meet her, it’s 1969 and she’s being put on trial for murder. A young man who Kya was involved with has fallen to his death from a six-story fire tower. Was foul play involved? If so, was Kya the culprit? The local law enforcers don’t seem too interested in evidence. They’ve targeted Kya, who is known by the locals as Marsh Girl. For most of her life, she has been a scary local legend — the scandalous wild child, the wolf girl, the uncivilized outsider. Now, perhaps, she’s become a scapegoat.

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The film then flashes back to 1953, when Kya is about 10 (and played by the feisty Jojo Regina), and her life unfolds as the redneck version of a Dickensian nightmare, with a father (Garret Dillahunt) who’s a violent abuser, a mother (Ahna O’Reilly) who abandons her, and a brother who soon follows. Kya is left with Pa, who retains his cruel ways (when a letter arrives from her mother, he burns it right in front of her), though he eases up on the beatings. Barefoot and undernourished, she tries to go to school and lasts one day; the taunting of the other kids sends her packing. Pa himself soon ditches Kya, leaving the girl to raise herself in that marshland shack.

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All very dark. Yet with these stark currents in place, “Where the Crawdads Sing” segues into episodes with Kya as a teenager and young woman, and for a while the film seems to turn into a kind of badlands YA reverie. Kya may have a past filled with torment, but on her own she’s free — to do what she likes, to find innovative ways to survive (she digs up mussels at dawn and sells them to the Black proprietors of a local general store, played by Michael Hyatt and Sterling Macer Jr., who become her caretakers in town), and to chart her own destiny.

You’d expect someone known as Marsh Girl to have a few rough edges. Remember Jodie Foster’s feral backwoods ragamuffin in “Nell”? (She, too, was from North Carolina.) Yet Kya, for a wild child, is pretty refined, with thick flowy hair parted in the middle, a wardrobe of billowy rustic dresses, and a way of speaking that makes her sound like she grew up as the daughter of a couple of English teachers. (Unlike just about everyone else in the movie, she lacks even a hint of a drawl.) She does watercolor drawings of the seashells in the marshland, and her gift for making art is singular. She’s like Huck Finn meets Pippi Longstocking by way of Alanis Morissette.

The English actor Daisy Edgar-Jones, who has mostly worked on television (“Normal People,” “War of the Worlds”), has a doleful, earnest-eyed sensuality reminiscent of the quality that Alana Haim brought to “Licorice Pizza.” She gives Kya a quiet surface but makes her wily and vibrantly poised — which isn’t necessarily wrong , but it cuts against (and maybe reveals) our own prejudices, putting the audience in the position of thinking that someone known as Marsh Girl might not come off as quite this self-possessed. Kya meets a local boy, Tate Walker (Taylor John Smith), who has the look of a preppie dreamboat and teaches her, out of the goodness of his heart, to read and write. It looks like the two are falling in love, at least until it’s time for him to go off to college in Raleigh. Despite his protestations of devotion, Kya knows that he’s not coming back.

You could say that “Where the Crawdads Sing” starts out stormy and threatening, then turns romantic and effusive, then turns foreboding again. Yet that wouldn’t express the way the film’s light and dark tones work together. The movie, written by Lucy Alibar (“Beasts of the Southern Wild”) and directed by Olivia Newman with a confidence and visual vivacity that carry you along (the lusciously crisp cinematography is by Polly Morgan), turns out to be a myth of resilience. It’s Kya’s story, and in her furtive way she keeps undermining the audience’s perceptions about her.

The scenes of Kya’s murder trial are fascinating, because they’re not staged with the usual courtroom-movie cleverness. Kya is defended by Tim Milton ( David Strathairn ), who knew her as a girl and has come out of retirement to see justice done. In his linen suits, with his Southern-gentleman logic, he demolishes one witness after another, but mostly because there isn’t much of a case against Kya. The fellow she’s accused of killing, Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson), is the one she took up with after Tate abandoned her, and he’s a sketchier shade of preppie player, with a brusque manner that is less than trustworthy. He keeps her separate from his classy friends in town (at one point we learn why), and his scoundrel tendencies just mount from there. Did she have a motive for foul play?

“Where the Crawdads Sing” is at once a mystery, a romance, a back-to-nature reverie full of gnarled trees and hanging moss, and a parable of women’s power and independence in a world crushed under by masculine will. The movie has a lot of elements that will remind you of other films, like “The Man in the Moon,” the 1991 drama starring Reese Witherspoon (who is one of the producers here). But they combine in an original way. The ending is a genuine jaw-dropper, and while I wouldn’t go near revealing it, I’ll just say that this is a movie about fighting back against male intransigence that has the courage of its outsider spirit.

Reviewed at Museum of Modern Art, July 11, 2022. MPA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 125 MIN.

Production: A Sony Pictures Releasing release of a 3000 Pictures production. Producers: Reese Witherspoon, Lauren Neustadter. Executive producers: Rhonda Fehr, Betsy Danbury.
Crew: Director: Olivia Newman. Screenplay: Lucy Alibar. Camera: Polly Morgan. Editor: Alan Edward Bell. Music: Mychael Danna.
With: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Taylor John Smith, Harris Dickinson, Michael Hyatt, Sterling Macer Jr., David Strathairn, Jayson Warner Smith, Garret Dillahunt, Ahna O’Reilly, Eric Ladin.

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Where the Crawdads Sing Reviews

What means to be a whodunit that leaves the reveal to the very, very end, Where the Crawdads Sing, directed by Olivia Newman, instead sucks all of the mystery out of a murder trial that offers no alternatives to the theory at hand.

Full Review | Jul 29, 2024

It’s far more concerned with binary portrayals of good and bad, presenting them as overly whimsical or toxic respectively. It’s a promising concept that translates into a frustrating experience of tonal incoherence.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 15, 2024

it unfortunately runs the original story through the Hollywood machine, rendering it a surface-level and boilerplate experience that dilutes the emotional profundity of its source material. All the while being a borderline unbearable snooze fest.

Full Review | Nov 2, 2023

No doubt Alibar and Newman are just keeping as close as possible to the book. It is very much to their credit that they have committed so totally to giving the fans what they want without resorting to cheap fan service.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 31, 2023

Where the Crawdads Sing makes for a decent if generic coming-of-age story and a bland murder mystery.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Aug 10, 2023

Try as it might, Where the Crawdads Sing amounts to nothing more than a shallow tale of otherness told through the lens of the prettiest, cleanest marsh girl you’ve ever seen.

Full Review | Aug 6, 2023

A solid interesting idea with a fantastic performance from Daisy really makes the film from being average!

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

The all-female team of director Olivia Newman, screenwriter Lucy Alibar, and producer Reese Witherspoon do a tremendous job of painting a seductive small-town feel to a mystery thriller that should be anything but that.

Sanitized of any elements that could make this a marshy murder, Where The Crawdads Sing is a return to the type of films one would find in the Nicholas Sparksesque cinematic universe.

With no reason to fear for her safety, the bulk of the film feels like a soap opera.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 3, 2023

Where the Crawdads Sing feels like a novel truly coming to life. The scripting, the dialogue, the scenery choices, the score, has it all of the pieces to make you feel its great pacing & progression. The story may be harsh but its all the more encouraging

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Jan 1, 2023

An old-school murder mystery primarily told as a courtroom drama, the paperback adaptation entertains from start to finish.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Nov 13, 2022

The book might have been a phenomenon, however the film lacks “the grits” of the original text. Sadly Where The Crawdads Sing becomes bogged down in courtroom drama tropes to truly sing in its own right.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 13, 2022

…eventually settles for a fairly conventional Southern Gothic narrative with several plot points posted missing but a strong self-empowerment education message…

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 7, 2022

Where the Crawdads Sing is a beautifully haunting story of one girl's quiet resilience in a film that floats across multiple genres: thriller, romance and, ultimately, survival story.

Full Review | Oct 19, 2022

"Where the Crawdads Sing" is an imperfect but captivating drama.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Oct 10, 2022

Mellifluous but never cheesy, the film seeks effective and healing tears for fans of this kind of fare, and treks through territory that isn't too minor. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Oct 3, 2022

The PG-13-ness of Where the Crawdads Sing buffs every rough edge off this story—the abuse, the abandonment, the betrayal, the sex, and even the alleged murder. It would be better off as trash.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 3, 2022

A coming-of-age story and murder mystery about a young naturalist living in the marshes who has to find out who she can truly trust.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 30, 2022

Daisy Edgar-Jones dominates this role, she has the gift of reflecting any feeling without practically raising an eyebrow. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 29, 2022

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Where the Crawdads Sing Eats Itself into Nothingness

In a perfect vacuum, you probably wouldn’t guess that Where the Crawdads Sing is based on a runaway publishing phenomenon, a book that has sold more than 12 million copies in just a few years. One doesn’t have to have loved Delia Owens’s debut novel to see why it has appealed to countless readers. Part murder mystery, part swoony romance, part cornpone coming-of-age tale, it’s an atmospheric and gleefully overheated melodrama, the kind of book that might make you tear up even as you curse its (many, many) shortcomings. The movie is resolutely faithful to the incidents of the novel, but it doesn’t seem particularly interested in standing on its own, in being a movie . It feels like an illustration more than an adaptation.

The story of Kya Clark, a young girl abandoned by her destitute family and forced to survive on her own in a remote corner of the North Carolina wilderness, the film starts off (much like the book) with a murder investigation and then flashes back to her life. The body of a man, Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson), has been found in the woods, and suspicion has settled on Kya (played as an adult by Daisy Edgar-Jones), a loner known to much of the town as “the Marsh Girl.” Taking up the case is a kindly local retired lawyer (played by a much-needed David Strathairn), who believes that Kya has been accused not because of any actual evidence against her, but because she’s been an outcast all her life, ridiculed and hated for years by the townsfolk as some kind of crazy, uncivilized brute.

As we go through Kya’s earlier years, we see a childhood defined by solitude — her mother and her siblings all leave their abusive father one by one, and dad himself (Garret Dillahunt) eventually disappears, leaving Kya alone in the family’s run-down shack on the edge of the marsh. As she grows up, Kya is romanced by a couple of blandly handsome two by fours — nerdy-nice Tate (played by Taylor John Smith as a grown-up) who shares her obsession with nature but then abandons her, and then local rich-boy Chase, who seems fascinated by her but clearly has little interest in a real relationship. We’re supposed to like one and dislike the other, but both Tate and Chase are so underdeveloped that it’s initially hard to feel much of anything for either. They barely register as people. Smith does little but stare lovingly, and Dickinson (who has, to be fair, distinguished himself in previous roles) brings a dash of snotty entitlement to Chase, but not much else.

The best thing about both novel and movie is Kya herself, a submerged character who finds solace and companionship in nature, and who, never having lived anything resembling a normal life around other people, doesn’t quite know what to do with her emotions. As the young Marsh Girl, Jojo Regina is quite moving; your heart goes out to her when a character reads out the local school lunch menu as a way of enticing the impoverished Kya to attend class. It’s a tough balance, to present a child as being both feisty and vulnerable without going overboard into schmaltzy pathos, and the film handles that particular challenge fairly well. As the grown-up Kya, Edgar-Jones is perhaps best at conveying this young woman’s wounded inner life; that speaks to the actress’s talents. However, she never really feels like someone who emerged from this world, but rather one who was dropped into it; that speaks to the clunky filmmaking.

It’s kind of a shock to find the movie version of Crawdads so lacking in atmosphere, as you’d think that’d be the one thing it would nail. Not the least because that lies at the heart of the book’s appeal: Owens spends pages describing the rough, wild, primeval world in which Kya lives, and she convincingly presents the girl as a part of the natural order of this untouched world. At various points, Kya sees herself reflected in the behavior of wild turkeys, snow geese, fireflies, seagulls, and more. She calls herself a seashell and later on finds friendship in Sunday Justice, the jailhouse cat. Where the Crawdads Sing is a book that drips with atmosphere and environmental detail, which enhance our understanding of the protagonist — and help justify some of the story’s more dramatic turns. Owens is herself a retired wildlife biologist who had previously written a number of nature books before turning to fiction. It’s no surprise that her novel works best as an extension of her prior work.

By contrast, the film’s director, Olivia Newman, presents the marsh as a postcard-pretty backdrop, a mostly distant and at times surprisingly calm and orderly space. There’s little sense of wildness, of unpredictability or abandon. Readers will of course often imagine settings differently than film adaptations, but that’s not the problem here. Onscreen, the marsh just never really registers as any kind of place, and it certainly doesn’t register as a spiritual canvas for Kya’s journey. (At times, I wondered if some of the landscape shots might actually have been green-screened in.) Even the fact that Kya has spent much of her life drawing the wildlife of the region – which ultimately plays a huge role in who she becomes – doesn’t come into play until relatively late in the film. None of these would necessarily be problems if the film weren’t otherwise so faithful to the book’s narrative.

This is the challenge of literary condensation. The murder investigation and the ensuing courtroom drama are the least compelling parts of Owens’s novel, there mostly as a loose framing device to tell Kya’s life story. Indeed, she saves the bulk of the trial for the back half of the book, and then breezes by the suspense and the procedural back-and-forth, presumably because she’s not interested in all that. (Spoiler alert: She’s more interested in the twist she springs in her final pages – a twist that also has some eerie echoes of a real-life murder investigation in Zambia that Owens and her ex-husband are reportedly embroiled in, but that’s a whole other crazy story .)

That leaves the movie with a genre-friendly structure, but almost nothing to populate it with. As a result, for much of Where the Crawdads Sing , we’re left watching a not-very interesting and all-but predetermined trial, with little suspense or surprise. We don’t ever really see what the prosecution’s case is against Kya. (If you read the book, you’d have some sense of it, but even there, it’s cursory and half-baked.) It’s a classic Catch-22: The film, to stay true to its wildly popular source material, has to focus on the case, which in turn leaves the picture little room to breathe, to let the audience bask in the atmosphere of this fascinating milieu… which is at least partly why the source material was so wildly popular in the first place. So, forget the crawdads, the turkeys, the fireflies, the seashells, and the snow geese. Forget even the jailhouse cat. The movie is a snake that eats itself.

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Book-to-movie adaptations can be notoriously difficult to nail. Get things right, and fans of the source material will sing its praises. Get things wrong, though, and the movie will become infamous. In the case of Where the Crawdads Sing , Olivia Newman's adaptation of Delia Owens' best-selling novel, there is a very good chance it will find itself in the former category when it arrives in theaters. The gorgeously-shot movie is incredibly faithful to the book and will no doubt delight those who have eagerly devoured its pages. However, as a movie, Where the Crawdads Sing stumbles a bit in its transition from page to screen, though it is aided by a great lead performance.

Picking up in 1969, the sleepy town of Barkley Cove, North Carolina is shaken by the apparent murder of golden boy Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson). There is a shocking lack of evidence found at the crime scene, but rumors have already put a suspect on trial: The famed "Marsh Girl," a Barkley Cove legend who has been the subject of scorn for years. In reality, the Marsh Girl is Kya Clark ( Daisy Edgar-Jones ), a shy girl with a deep passion for nature. Turning back the clock several years, Where the Crawdads Sing digs into Kya's life, her relationship with the surrounding marsh, and whether she might be involved in Chase's untimely demise.

Related: Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris Review: Lesley Manville Shines In Wholesome 1950s Tale

Taylor John Smith and Daisy Edgar-Jones in Where the Crawdads Sing

Where the Crawdads Sing has been a book club favorite for years now, and as a result, its adaptation has some high expectations attached. Luckily, it is clear from almost the very beginning that Newman and her team have nothing but the utmost respect for the source material. Lucy Alibar has penned a screenplay that is filled with numerous details and lines lifted straight from the book, making this one of the most faithful adaptations in recent memory. To be sure, Where the Crawdads Sing makes some adjustments here and there, but they are relatively small. By filming on location, Newman is able to make the most of actual marshes in the South, and cinematographer Polly Morgan does an excellent job at showcasing these beautiful natural landscapes. In many ways, Where the Crawdads Sing really brings Kya's world to life in vivid fashion, including through the carefully detailed work of production designer Sue Chan.

However, there are places where the movie's devotion to the book causes it to run aground. Literally, in a way, as Where the Crawdads Sing holds some pacing issues. There are key moments in Kya's murder trial that should be filled with tension and suspense; instead, they lack the necessary urgency. On the specific topic of the trial, the movie suffers early on from jarring cuts between the past and the present. These get better as Chase's prominence in the plot increases, but the first portion of Where the Crawdads Sing can't seem to find a suitable balance between Kya's early life and her uneasy future. Additionally, in its attempt to bring as many book moments to life as possible, the movie finds itself grappling with a few awkward moments that, while reading fine on the page, don't exactly translate well to a visual medium.

Daisy Edgar-Jones in Where the Crawdads Sing

Where the Crawdads Sing 's greatest strength is Edgar-Jones (and Jojo Regina, who plays a younger Kya). Kya is a unique main character and Edgar-Jones does a great job in bringing her to life. Whether it is by expressing delighted wonderment over a gifted feather or retreating in on herself in the face of a potential death sentence, Edgar-Jones plays all sides of Kya with ease. Taylor John Smith takes on the pivotal role of Tate, Kya's first true friend. Armed with a kind smile and earnest disposition, Smith possesses all the charms Tate should have, and his chemistry with Edgar-Jones further sells their bond. As the more complicated Chase, Dickinson does a good job in gradually exposing the kind of man his character really is. Special credit should be given to Michael Hyatt and Sterling Mercer Jr. as Mabel and Jumpin, respectively; though their roles remain as sadly underwritten as they are in the book, they bring real heart to each and every one of their scenes.

Where the Crawdads Sing will surely appease fans of the book, and on some level, its adherence to the source material is to be commended. It is very clear the filmmaking team respects and appreciates the book. However, that passion doesn't entirely hide the cracks that emerge when transferring a story from one medium to another. The production itself and Edgar-Jones do much to bring this world to brilliant life. Ultimately, though, Where the Crawdads Sing is unable to soar like the birds Kya admires so much.

More: Watch The Where The Crawdads Sing Trailer

Where the Crawdads Sing releases in theaters Friday, July 15. It is 125 minutes long and rated PG-13 for sexual content and some violence including a sexual assault.

Where the Crawdads Sing

Where the Crawdads Sing is a dramatic mystery film directed by Olivia Newman (First Match, Chicago Fire) and based on the 2018 novel of the same name, set in the 1950s, the film centers around Catherine "Kya" Clark (Daisy-Edgar Jones), a girl abandoned at an early age who is forced to raise herself in the marshes of North Carolina, adapting entirely to the wilderness. After meeting a young boy named Tate Walker, who teaches her the ways of the world by lending her books and teaching her valuable skills, she can sustain herself. However, as Kya enters her late teen years, a whirlwind romance with a young quarterback somehow puts her on trial for murder. Kya will have to prove her innocence to continue living in a world she only now has begun to understand.

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Where the Crawdads Sing

A woman who raised herself in the marshes of the Deep South becomes a suspect in the murder of a man with whom she was once involved. A woman who raised herself in the marshes of the Deep South becomes a suspect in the murder of a man with whom she was once involved. A woman who raised herself in the marshes of the Deep South becomes a suspect in the murder of a man with whom she was once involved.

Olivia Newman
Delia Owens
Lucy Alibar
Daisy Edgar-Jones
Taylor John Smith
Harris Dickinson
745 User reviews
195 Critic reviews
43 Metascore
2 wins & 13 nominations

Top cast 56

Tate Walker

Chase Andrews

Jumpin'

Jodie Clark

Sheriff Jackson

Little Tate

Little Chase

Little Jodie

Deputy Perdue

Eric Chastain

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Trivia Delia Owens : The author of the novel is seen in the courtroom sitting on the front row behind Tom when Patti is testifying about Chase's shell necklace.
Goofs All the of the addresses of publishers Tate gives to Kya have ZIP codes. He gave her the list in 1962; the first ZIP codes were established on July 1, 1963 and were not in common use until the late 1960s/early 1970s.

Tom Milton : Listen. I know you have a world of reasons to hate these people...

Kya Clark : No, I never hated them. They hated me. They laughed at me. They left me. They harassed me. They attacked me. You want me to beg for my life? I don't have it in me. I won't. I will not offer myself up. They can make their decision. But they're not deciding anything about me. It's them. They're judging themselves.

Crazy credits Kya's drawings appear alongside the credits.
Connections Featured in Everything Wrong with...: Everything Wrong With Where The Crawdads Sing in 18 Minutes or Less (2023)
Soundtracks Ain't It Baby Written by Kenny Gamble and Jimmy Bishop Performed by Kenny Gamble & The Romeos Courtesy of Jamie Record Co.

User reviews 745

nancyldraper
Jul 15, 2022
How long is Where the Crawdads Sing? Powered by Alexa
July 15, 2022 (United States)
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La chica salvaje
Houma, Louisiana, USA (street scenes)
3000 Pictures
Hello Sunshine
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$24,000,000 (estimated)
$90,230,760
$17,253,227
Jul 17, 2022
$144,353,965

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Runtime 2 hours 5 minutes

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‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ Review: The Literary Sensation Becomes a Glossy Summer Popcorn Movie

David ehrlich.

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We may never know the full truth behind Delia Owens’ checkered past as a conservationist — which almost certainly seem to include a militant, white savior-minded approach to policing Zambian wildlife preserves, and may also extend to being a “co-conspirator and accessory” to murder — but the secret to the “ Where the Crawdads Sing ” author’s success is now as obvious as her plotting, even to those of us who had never heard of the runaway bestseller until Taylor Swift invented it a few short weeks ago. Olivia Newman’s (“First Match”) slick and glossy beach read of a movie adaptation brings it all right to the surface. Which is just as well, because the surface is the only layer this movie has.

Yes, this is an expertly contrived melodrama about defiance in the face of abandonment, and sure, it’s also a faintly self-exonerating caricature of a natural woman unspoiled by Western society. But underneath the story’s humid romance with Carolina marshland, and behind its Hollywood-ready façade of backwater Americana, “Where the Crawdads Sing” is really just a swampy riff on “Pygmalion,” with Eliza Doolittle reimagined as a semi-feral outsider who’s obviously the hottest girl in town, but lives in almost complete isolation until the Zack Siler of Barkley Cove teachers her how to read and make out.

Streamlined from its source material with the help of a Lucy Aliber script that embraces the frothiness of Owens’ book while turning down the temperature of its florid, nature is my real mama narration, the film version of “Where the Crawdads Sing” is a lot more fun as a hothouse page-turner than it is as a soulful tale of feminine self-sufficiency. That it’s able to split the difference between Nicholas Sparks and “Nell” with any measure of believability is a testament to Daisy Edgar-Jones ’ careful performance as Kya Clark.

The youngest daughter of an abusive drunk, and the only member of her family who stayed in their remote North Carolina house until the day Pa died sometime in the 1950s, Kya’s childhood was spent watching the people who loved her leave one-by-one (she’s played as a child by Jojo Regina). On her own from an early age, and dehumanized into folklore by the “normal” people in town — especially the kids, who label her “Marsh Girl” and laugh her right back to the swamp when she shows up at school without shoes on — Kya is forced to survive by selling mussels to the nice Black couple who run the local store (Sterling Macer, Jr. as Jumpin, and Michael Hyatt as his wife Mabel).

Some years later she’ll be hauled down to the Barkley Cove jail and forced to stand trial for the murder of a pasty cad named Chase Andrews; it’s there, at the behest of the retired lawyer ( David Strathairn !) who takes her case out of the goodness of his heart, that Kya is finally compelled to share her life story for the first time, her voiceover guiding us through the past in snippets of evocatively overwrought prose that establish her connection to nature. “Marsh is a space of light,” she coos, “where grass grows in water, and water flows into the sky.” In a real time is a flat circle kind of twist, it often feels like Kya taught herself to write by reading all the other novels that have been canonized by Reese Witherspoon’s book club.

Of course, self-reliant and capable as Kya is, we soon learn that she learned her letters with the help of the square-jawed soft boy who grew up down the creek. The Dawson Leery to Kya’s Joey Potter, Tate Walker (Taylor John Smith) is a kind-hearted soul who lost some family of his own, which might explain why he always remembered the orphaned girl who everyone else in Barkley Cove was eager to forget. In the summer before college, Tate starts leaving Kya supplies on a tree stump — as if he were filling a food trap for a wild animal — only to discover that the Marsh Girl has matured into a movie star. It’s a genuine credit to Newman’s handle on her film’s silly-serious tone that she allows Kya, who doesn’t have electricity or running water, to look like she’s blown all of her mussel money on Pantene Pro-V. Anyway, kissing ensues. Sometimes amid a slow-motion vortex of leaves.

Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Tate Walker (Taylor John Smith) in Columbia Pictures' WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING.

But if Tate thinks the Marsh Girl will always be waiting for him (a girl can only go so far without shoes), he’s in for a rude awakening; once the word gets out that Kya is a total catch, she becomes an irresistible fetish object for the kind of fella who might have less honorable intentions. Enter our corpse-in-waiting, Mr. Chase Andrews. Played by a slithering but somewhat vulnerable Harris Dickinson , who looks so much like Taylor John Smith that his dark-haired character might as well be the blond Tate’s evil twin, Chase loves Kya like a backhanded compliment, and talks down to her even when he’s trying to get her top off. We know he won’t be around for long, but did he fall from that rickety fire tower, or was he pushed? Surely a girl like Kya, so desperate for someone who might not abandon her, wouldn’t kill the one person who hadn’t yet?

That framing device of a question looms in the background of a movie that is far less interested in how Chase dies than it is by how Kya is persecuted for it — by how the Marsh Girl has remained innocent despite a lifetime of prejudice. Shy without being sneaky, naive without seeming childlike, and in tune with nature without going full “raised by wolves” (though the jailhouse cat’s instant affinity for her is a little much), Edgar-Jones’ wide-eyed performance completely sells us on Kya’s reality as a survivor. Her soft voice and defensive posture lend the character a lilting interiority that holds this movie together across multiple timelines.

Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones) in Columbia Pictures' WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING.

It’s a doubly impressive feat in an adaptation that’s often edited to feel like a two-hour montage, a nagging issue that leaves “Crawdads” a little off-key from its slippery first half to its inelegant coda (though only one early scene of young Kya and Tate yapping at each other from separate boats truly borders on “Bohemian Rhapsody” territory). It’s just a shame the story’s ultra-predictable ending is presented in a way that denies us the full potential of Edgar-Jones’ performance, as Newman opts for hair-raising inference over primal satisfaction.

To that same point, “Where the Crawdads Sing” works best when it embraces its own true nature as a popcorn movie. Newman seems to recognize that “and David Strathairn” are the three most beautiful words that can ever appear in the opening credits of a studio film, and she gives the actor the space he needs to stalk across a sweaty courtroom in a white suit and make us gasp along with the small crowd of people who’ve gathered to witness Kya’s trial. Dickinson textures Chase as well as the script will allow, but delights in the character’s inherent punchability so that the film’s central love triangle never loses it shape. If Jumpin and Mabel still betray the career-long criticism that Owens tends to infantilize her Black characters, Macer and Hyatt ground their roles in a quiet dignity that pushes back against how they may have been written on the page.

As a movie, “Where the Crawdads Sing” never seems worthy of the hullabaloo that continues to surround the book, but — much like its heroine — Newman’s adaptation finds just enough ways to endure.

Sony Pictures will release “Where the Crawdads Sing” in theaters on Friday, July 15.

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Daisy edgar-jones in ‘where the crawdads sing’: film review.

A young woman raised in the North Carolina marshes becomes the subject of investigation after a grisly murder in this film adaptation of Delia Owens’ best-selling novel.

By Lovia Gyarkye

Lovia Gyarkye

Arts & Culture Critic

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Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones) in WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING.

Where the Crawdads Sing is the kind of tedious moral fantasy that fuels America’s misguided idealism. It’s an attempt at a complex tale about rejection, difference and survival. But the film, like the novel it’s based on, skirts the issues — of race, gender and class — that would texture its narrative and strengthen its broad thesis, resulting in a story that says more about how whiteness operates in a society allergic to interdependence than it does about how communities fail young people.

Directed by Olivia Newman ( First Match ), the film adaptation of Delia Owens’ popular and controversial novel of the same name tells the remarkable tale of a shy, reclusive girl raised in the marshes of North Carolina who finds herself embroiled in a grisly police investigation. Her name is Kya ( Daisy Edgar-Jones of Normal People , Fresh and Under the Banner of Heaven ), but to those in the neighboring town, whose residents abhor her, she is known simply as “Marsh Girl.” The account of her life is remarkable because it requires such a powerful suspension of disbelief, a complete abandonment of logic and total submission to the workaday beats of this story.

Full credits

Distributor: Sony Pictures Production company: 3000 Pictures Cast: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Taylor John Smith, Harris Dickinson, Michael Hyatt, Sterling Macer, Jr., David Strathairn Director: Olivia Newman Screenwriter: Lucy Alibar Based upon the novel by: Delia Owens Producer: Reese Witherspoon, Lauren Neustadter Executive producers: Rhonda Fehr, Betsy Danbury Director of photography: Polly Morgan Production designer: Sue Chan Costume designer: Mirren Gordon-Crozier Editor: Alan Edward Bell Composer: Mychael Danna Casting director: David Rubin

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Where the Crawdads Sing review: A glossy, Instagram-primed buffet of cinematic faux-feminism

Film adaptation of delia owens’ murky bestseller depicts rural south carolina as scrubbed so clean you might as well call it #swampcore, article bookmarked.

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Dir: Olivia Newman. Starring: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Taylor John Smith, Harris Dickinson, Michael Hyatt, Sterling Macer, Jr, David Strathairn. 15, 126 minutes.

Welcome to Hollywood – where even an active murder investigation isn’t enough to halt the adaptation of a best-selling book into a glossy, Instagram-primed buffet of cinematic faux-feminism. Where the Crawdads Sing , having sold more than 12 million copies since its publication in 2018, is the very definition of a literary sensation. It was featured as part of Reese Witherspoon’s book club. The actor now serves as the film’s executive producer.

Usually, you’d applaud that kind of sage entrepreneurship. But Delia Owens, who wrote Where the Crawdads Sing , is currently wanted for questioning by the Zambian authorities over a piece of ABC News footage that appears to show the shooting and killing by persons unknown of an unidentified poacher on a wildlife reserve overseen by Owens and her husband, Mark. And anyone who argues that these are merely irrelevant pieces of biography – unproven accusations that would sit more comfortably in the margins of a gossip magazine – is faced with the odd and uncomfortable reality that so much of Where the Crawdads Sing reads as a moral defence for nature’s laws superseding those set down by man.

“A swamp knows all about death, and doesn’t necessarily define it as tragedy, certainly not a sin,” the book’s prologue reads, along with the opening lines of Olivia Newman’s film. Its protagonist, Kya ( Daisy Edgar-Jones ), is steadfastly presented as someone whose tether to her marshland home, in South Carolina, is a talisman of unblemished authenticity. When the body of a local man, Chase Andrews ( Harris Dickinson ), is discovered out in the wilderness, everyone assumes that Kya, the reclusive “Marsh Girl” who’s been systematically abandoned by her entire family, must be responsible. She’s arrested and immediately thrown in jail.

Kya and Chase had some sort of dalliance, a distraction from the toils of her star-crossed, fairytale romance with childhood sweetheart Tate ( Taylor John Smith , who is just as blandly pleasant as the role requires). And it’s that Nicholas Sparks-adjacent, impassioned but oh-so chaste love story that Newman and screenwriter Lucy Alibar seem most heavily invested in. I’m not at all surprised. Owens does have a certain, swoony turn of phrase – “being completely alone was a feeling so vast it echoed” is especially lovely – and scenes of Kya and Tate making out inside a tornado of leaves, or as a flock of seabirds tear their way up to the sky, are earnestly staged by Newman.

She Will review: A story of feminine vengeance that weaves like an arachnid

Does the fact the film largely ignores the book’s treatise on nature and virtue absolve it of all connections to Owens’s real-life controversies? It certainly doesn’t, on an artistic level, improve what’s already contained on the page. Newman’s vision of rural South Carolina is scrubbed so clean you might as well call it #swampcore – the Spanish moss looks bright and pristine, the flower petals on the water almost consciously arranged. Owens, at least, presented the wild as wild. Kya, too, is a young woman treated as if she were feral by those around her, while simultaneously dressing and grooming herself like an Instagram tradwife. There’s a scene where she walks into town, and everyone reacts in shock – this is the first time they’ve ever seen her in makeup and with her hair combed. She looks exactly the same as she does in every other scene in the film.

Where the Crawdads Sing , in short, treats rural poverty as if it were a desirable aesthetic, the ultimate way to reconnect with nature. That’s a problem not only for the obvious reasons. We hear David Strathairn’s kindly lawyer argue in court that Kya never had “the weakness of character” to murder Chase. It feels like we’re being asked to empathise with her less because she’s a social outcast and more because she’s a skinny, pretty, white girl. Edgar-Jones certainly doesn’t skimp on the doe-eyed naivete – post- Normal People and Fresh , there’s a real danger of her being boxed into these kinds of waif roles. Her marginalisation isn’t treated as much more than not being invited to sit at the cool kids’ lunch table.

It feels particularly farcical in the face of how the film’s sole Black characters are treated – a local couple, Jumpin (Sterling Macer Jr) and Mabel (Michael Hyatt), who own a store and care for the abandoned Kya with saintly generosity. Race, in a film set in Sixties South Carolina, does not factor. The film is rigorously insistent that Kya is the only person in her area code who has ever been persecuted in any way.

Again, if anyone had been paying attention to Owens’ past conservation activities, they might have drawn a connection between how patronisingly stereotyped the Black characters are in her book and past allegations of a racist attitude towards the people of Zambia (an acquaintance, in a New Yorker article published in 2010, characterised her views as “Nice continent. Pity about the Africans”). But, hey, who has time to check up on those things when there’s so much money to be made?

‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ is in cinemas from 22 July

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Where The Crawdads Sing Review

Where The Crawdads Sing

Translating a much-loved novel to the big screen is always a tricky task. With Delia Owens’ Where The Crawdads Sing , which has sold more than 12 million copies to date, the audience is big and the expectations are high. This cinematic version, produced by Reese Witherspoon ’s Hello Sunshine, unfortunately doesn’t succeed in meeting them.

Daisy Edgar-Jones , a star on the rise after her incredible performance in BBC/Hulu series Normal People and playing a gutsy final girl in horror-thriller Fresh , is plunged into a swampy, period environment here. She is Kya, a solitary young woman left to fend for herself after her mother, then siblings, then abusive father, all desert her. Shunned by the townsfolk around her, it doesn’t take long for fingers to point in her direction when a man is found dead near her home.

You never quite buy the young, thin, beautiful, white Kya as a true outsider.

This murder accusation, and the trial deciding Kya’s fate, is the framing device for the film. Ditching the more chronological approach of the book, Lucy Alibar’s screenplay reveals the crime at the very top of the runtime, flashing backwards and forwards to fill in the gaps. This might not be an uncommon way to approach this kind of story, but it does dispel a certain amount of tension from the start — and the loose, feeble attempt at courtroom drama is nowhere near gripping enough to make it a setting we’re keen to return to.

Edgar-Jones’ natural charm, steely determination and convincing, almost-feral disposition, especially early on, keep you on Kya’s side, and Harris Dickinson impresses once again as charmingly sinister former quarterback Chase Andrews. He and Kya’s toxic, sometimes violent relationship adds some edge to this otherwise quite gentle movie — and though their dynamic is contrasted nicely by the safety and warmth Kya feels with all-American shrimper’s son Tate (Taylor John Smith), the latter pairing leaves a lot to be desired in terms of chemistry.

The trouble with this version of Where The Crawdads Sing is that you never quite buy the young, thin, beautiful, white Kya as a true outsider. The girl from the novel, covered in dirt and consumed by gnawing loneliness, is sanded down and smoothed out, her every thought over-explained by incessant voiceover. That treatment seems to have been applied to every other element of the film, too — so much so, it feels like it would be more at home in the BBC’s 8pm Sunday night slot than here on the big screen. The direction and cinematography are thoroughly conventional, lacking in much flavour or wonder, save for some beautiful sunset shots of the marshes, and the score is often saccharine and overbearing. For fans of the book, there will be some satisfaction in watching these characters come to life and the plot’s twists and turns play out — but for newcomers to this story, it is, unfortunately, underwhelming.

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Review: ‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ is the latest literary sensation turned ho-hum movie

Daisy Edgar-Jones and Taylor John Smith in "Where the Crawdads Sing."

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In 2018, retired zoologist Delia Owens, the author of the bestselling 1984 memoir “Cry of the Kalahari,” published her first novel at the age of 69. “Where the Crawdads Sing” is set on the North Carolina coast in the 1950s and ’60s, threading romance and murder mystery through the life story of a young, isolated woman, Kya, who grows up abandoned in the marsh. The story is a bit far-fetched, the characterizations broad, but there’s a beauty in Owens’ description of Kya’s relationship to the natural world. Her derisive nickname, “the Marsh Girl,” ultimately becomes her strength.

“Where the Crawdads Sing” has become a legitimate publishing phenomenon, one of the bestselling books of all time, despite a controversy bubbling in Owens’ past — a connection to the killing of a suspected animal poacher in Zambia. Reese Witherspoon bestowed the book with her book club blessing, and as she has done with other titles from her club, like “Big Little Lies,” Witherspoon has produced the film adaptation of “Where the Crawdads Sing,” written by Lucy Alibar, directed by Olivia Newman, and starring Daisy Edgar-Jones as the heroine, Kya.

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The film is easily slotted into the Southern gothic courtroom drama sub-genre — it’s like “A Time to Kill” with a feminine touch. While the nature of adaptation requires compression and elision, the film dutifully tells the story that fans of the book will turn out to see brought to life on the big screen. But in checking off all the plot points, the movie version loses what makes the book work, which is the time we spend with Kya.

Kya is a tricky protagonist whose life story requires a certain suspension of disbelief. Abandoned by her mother (Ahna O’Reilly) and siblings escaping the drunken abuse of her father (Garret Dillahunt), who later disappears, young Kya (Jojo Regina) survives on her own, selling mussels to the proprietor of the local bait and tackle shop, Jumpin’ (Sterling Macer Jr.). His wife, Mabel (Michael Hyatt), takes pity on Kya and offers her some clothes and food donations, but it’s an exceedingly tough existence, something that the film does not manage to fully convey.

As a teen, Kya forms a friendship with a local boy, Tate (Taylor John Smith), who teaches her to read, and though their relationship turns romantic, he ultimately leaves her for college. Abandoned once again, she seeks companionship with popular local cad Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson). It’s his death, from a fall at the rickety fire tower, that sees Kya on trial in the town of Barkley Cove, which ultimately becomes a referendum on how she’s been harshly judged over the years by the townspeople.

The only reason Kya works in the book is the amount of time the reader spends with her in the marsh, understanding the tactics she uses to get by, and getting to know the natural world in the way that she does, observing the patterns and life cycles of animals, insects, and plants. The deep knowledge of her environment and ad-hoc education from Tate helps Kya overcome poverty, as she publishes illustrated books of local shells, plants, and birds. But in the film, which sacrifices getting to know her in order to prioritize the more scandal-driven twists and turns, Kya comes off as somewhat silly, a bit easy to laugh at in her naiveté and guilelessness.

There’s also the matter of plausibility, and the shininess with which this rough, wild world has been rendered by Newman and cinematographer Polly Morgan. The marsh (shot on location in Louisiana) is captured with a crisp, if perfunctory beauty, but it’s hard to buy English rose Edgar-Jones in her crisp blouses and clean jeans as the near-feral naturalist who has been brutally cast out by society. Everything’s just too pretty, a Disneyland version of the marsh.

The whole world feels sanded-down and spit-shined within an inch of its life, lacking any grime or grit that might make this feel authentic, and that extends to the storytelling as well. It feels exceedingly rushed, as the actors hit their marks and deliver their monologues with a sense of obligation to moving the plot along rather than developing character. Hyatt, as Mabel, and David Strathairn, who plays Kya’s lawyer, Tom Milton, are the only actors who deliver grounded performances that feel like real people — everyone else feels like a two-dimensional version of an archetype spouting the necessary backstory or subtext to keep the plot churning forward.

Though it is faithful, “Where the Crawdads Sing” is lacking the essential character and storytelling connective tissue that makes a story like this work — an adaptation such as this cannot survive on plot alone.

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

'Where the Crawdads Sing'

Rating: PG-13, for sexual content and some violence including a sexual assault Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes Playing: In general release July 15

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Where the crawdads sing.

Common Sense Says
Parents Say 26 Reviews
Kids Say 37 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Standout performances in uneven, trauma-filled adaptation.

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 14+?

Children hear their father beating their mother and siblings. A woman with visib

Two love scenes: one quick, the other a bit longer. Both show men's bare chests

Insult language: "marsh girl," "White trash," "rat girl," "cooties." "Damn," "da

High school- and college-age characters drink beer. Adults drink at a restaurant

Any Positive Content?

Explores importance of nature, self-education, and being a lifelong learner. Dep

Kya is observant, a quick learner, a dedicated naturalist. She's incredibly smar

Two of Kya's few friends are Jumpin' and his wife, Mabel, the movie's only Black

Violence & Scariness

Children hear their father beating their mother and siblings. A woman with visible bruises leaves her family. Siblings who are similarly hurt also leave, one by one. A father slaps his young daughter. A dead body is shown a few times. Intimate-partner violence continues in the next generation when Kya's former boyfriend stalks her menacingly and commits sexual assault and attempts to rape her, calling her "his."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Two love scenes: one quick, the other a bit longer. Both show men's bare chests and a woman's bare shoulders and back. Two different couples are shown flirting, holding hands, kissing. One couple is about to have sex but stop before it happens.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Insult language: "marsh girl," "White trash," "rat girl," "cooties." "Damn," "damn you," "Christ sakes," "whoring," "goddamn." A Black man is called "boy" by a younger White man.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

High school- and college-age characters drink beer. Adults drink at a restaurant. Kya's father drinks to excess and acts like he's self-medicating to treat unspecified mental illness.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Positive messages.

Explores importance of nature, self-education, and being a lifelong learner. Depicts the many reasons people need companionship and love. Also looks at the lasting impact of trauma and abandonment and the loneliness of isolation. Themes include empathy and perseverance.

Positive Role Models

Kya is observant, a quick learner, a dedicated naturalist. She's incredibly smart and talented. Tate is generous with his time and knowledge. He's smart and loves the marsh as much as Kya, but he also breaks her heart. Jumpin' and Mabel are selfless and helpful.

Diverse Representations

Two of Kya's few friends are Jumpin' and his wife, Mabel, the movie's only Black characters of note. They're kind, generous, loving to Kya. Although their involvement in Kya's life is less stereotypical than it was in the book, they can still be considered examples of the "magical Negro" cliché -- i.e., characters of color who exist solely to aid White protagonists. Kya herself is a self-educated "genius" who doesn't attend traditional school.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Parents need to know that Where the Crawdads Sing is a romantic mystery/drama based on Delia Owens' bestselling 2018 novel. It's set in the coastal marshes of 1950s-'60s North Carolina, where young Kya is dubbed "Marsh Girl" because she lives in near-complete isolation. As a young adult, Kya ( Daisy Edgar-Jones ), who doesn't trust the nearby townspeople, is accused of murder. Like the book, the film deals with heavy subjects, including child abandonment, domestic abuse, and sexual assault. The language is largely insults and uses of "damn" and "goddamn"; a White man also calls a Black man "boy." Violent scenes involve disturbing acts of intimate-partner abuse, child abuse, and sexual assault. A character is alcohol dependent and has an unspecified mental health condition. Kya experiences two pivotal romantic relationships, both of which include kissing and love scenes. The movie's depiction of two Black characters, while better than the book's, still plays into the "magical Negro" cliché, in which a character of color exists only to help a White main character. Issues related to trauma and isolation are threaded throughout the story, but so are the importance of nature, conservation, and education, giving parents and teens plenty to talk about after watching. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

Parents say (26)
Kids say (37)

Based on 26 parent reviews

Excellent story but contains violence and sexual abuse

Great movie, for adults., what's the story.

WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING is based on the bestselling historical romantic mystery novel written by naturalist Delia Owens. Set in a fictional North Carolina coastal town, the story takes place in the 1950s and '60s. In 1952, a young Kya Clark (Jojo Regina) witnesses her abused mother hurriedly leave the family, with the rest of the children following in her footsteps. Alone with her father ( Garret Dillahunt ), who's physically abusive and alcohol-dependent, Kya grows used to being alone in the marsh where her family's cabin sits. When her father also leaves, Kya learns to fend for herself with a little help from empathetic general store owners Jumpin' (Sterling Macer Jr.) and Mabel (Michael Hyatt). As she gets older, Kya lasts literally one day at the public school before bullying kids chase the "Marsh Girl" away. Years later, local high schooler Tate Walker ( Taylor John Smith ) teaches a now teenage Kya ( Daisy Edgar-Jones ) to read and write. After Tate leaves for college, Kya starts a relationship with popular quarterback Chase Andrews ( Harris Dickinson ), wooed by his promises of marriage and stability. When Chase is found dead in the marsh in 1969, Kya is accused of murder and defended by a local attorney ( David Strathairn ) who believes the townsfolk should feel guilty for mistreating Kya.

Is It Any Good?

The beauty of the natural setting and the central love story aren't quite enough to save this adaptation from the slippery slope of melodrama, but Edgar-Jones gives a standout performance. The genre-bending page-to-screen drama is like a classic tragic romance set in the American South, with young Kya an almost Dickensian figure. The cruelties that young Kya must endure are nearly unwatchable: Her entire family abandons her, her father slaps her, the other kids taunt her. Later, audiences will cheer as Kya grows into a young woman who observes all the fauna and flora of the marsh with joy and admiration (and as the lovely and selfless Tate takes an interest in tutoring her and clearly falls in love). But Kya's bad luck ultimately continues, and she ends up not with brilliant scientist-in-training Tate but with predatory and deceitful Chase, who's more interested in conquest than true love.

Screenwriter Lucy Alibar's adaptation makes the murder case against Kya the framing device that spawns flashbacks to the romances, tragedies, and family drama. But, unlike the book, the movie version of Where the Crawdads Sing doesn't fully explore each of those aspects of the story. The court proceedings in particular don't explore the details that make the eventual revelations pack an extra punch. What director Olivia Newman does explore is the way that darkness lurks just beneath the lush landscape. For every feather or shell that Kya collects, there's an ugly secret, a foul rumor, a moment of abuse to witness. It's no wonder Kya prefers the marsh to the town, the kindness of Jumpin' and Mabel to the scrutiny of Chase's friends. Kya, like the animals she's observed her whole life, knows when to shrink into herself as a survival mechanism. And while the movie can be overly sentimental, there are some lovely sequences, usually between Edgar-Jones and Smith. It also has notable messages about the importance of nature, love, and treating the disenfranchised with respect and dignity.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the violence in Where the Crawdads Sing . Is it necessary to the story? Do different kinds of violence impact viewers differently?

How do trauma and substance use play a role in the story? What are some character strengths that Kya and Tate display? Who do you consider a role model ?

Discuss what role the setting plays in the movie. Why is nature so important to Kya?

If you've read the book, talk about any differences between the book and movie. What do you think about aspects of the book that the movie added or changed?

How does the movie treat sex and consent? Parents, talk to your teens about sex, consent, and sexual assault.

Movie Details

In theaters : July 15, 2022
On DVD or streaming : September 13, 2022
Cast : Daisy Edgar-Jones , Harris Dickinson , Taylor John Smith , Garret Dillahunt
Director : Olivia Newman
Inclusion Information : Female directors
Studio : Sony Pictures Entertainment
Genre : Drama
Topics : Book Characters , Science and Nature
Character Strengths : Empathy , Perseverance
Run time : 125 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : sexual content and some violence including a sexual assault
Last updated : July 2, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

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Where The Crawdads Sing Reviews Are In, See What Critics Are Saying About The Adaptation Of The Bestselling Book

Daisy Edgar-Jones stars in the book-to-film adaptation.

Delia Owens took the literary world by storm with her 2018 novel Where the Crawdads Sing , and it was little surprise when the film got picked up to be adapted as a movie . Reese Witherspoon is a producer on the upcoming mystery drama after selecting the book for her Hello Sunshine Book Club, and now audiences are about to see the struggles of Marsh Girl Kya play out on the big screen. Where the Crawdads Sing has screened for critics ahead of its July 22 release, and the reviews are in.

Daisy Edgar-Jones stars as Kya Clark, a girl who is forced to grow up early and learn to survive on her own in the North Carolina marsh after being abandoned by her parents and siblings. Kya finds herself a suspect in a murder when her ex-boyfriend Chace Andrews (Harris Dickinson) turns up dead.

So how did critics feel about director Olivia Newman’s vision of Delia Owens’ best-selling book ? Let’s turn to the reviews, starting with CinemaBlend’s review of Where the Crawdads Sing . Our own Sarah El-Mahmoud rates the film 3 stars out 5, saying the film loses some of the spirit of the beloved book, as Olivia Newman seems to avoid the story’s grittiness in a somewhat glossy adaptation. She argues:

Just because a story is popular and is given a sizable budget to be adapted to the big screen, why should the spirit of the character be made nice and marketable, when the very core of her being is someone who is rough around the edges and cast out by the mainstream?

Hoai-Tran Bui of SlashFilm was similarly underwhelmed with the film, rating it 6 out of 10. This review says the murder mystery is turned into a glossy romance, resulting in a “soapy snooze”:

Despite the sordid stories surrounding its author and despite the sensationalist murder trial which makes up the bulk of its narrative, Where the Crawdads Sing is pretty banal. Its attempts at social commentary comes up short, while its heartstring-tugging is half-assed. The bildungsroman beats are promising before it gives way to the soapy love triangle that feels like a Nicholas Sparks reject. The saving graces are Edgar-Jones and David Straithairn, the latter of whom gives a warm, folksy performance as Kya's lawyer and lone sympathetic ear during the trial that seems like it's all but convicted her for murder based on evidence that is clearly circumstantial.

Lovia Gyarkye of The Hollywood Reporter calls the adaptation a “muddled moral fantasy” whose narrative relies heavily on racial and gender stereotypes. This review says while the Black characters are underdeveloped (a fault of the book as well, the critic argues), Kya is painted as so beautiful and delicate that she comes off as more “manic pixie dream girl than misanthropic protagonist”:

Where the Crawdads Sing is the kind of tedious moral fantasy that fuels America’s misguided idealism. It’s an attempt at a complex tale about rejection, difference and survival. But the film, like the novel it’s based on, skirts the issues — of race, gender and class — that would texture its narrative and strengthen its broad thesis, resulting in a story that says more about how whiteness operates in a society allergic to interdependence than it does about how communities fail young people.

David Ehrlich of IndieWire grades the movie a C+, saying Olivia Newman made Delia Owens’ literary sensation into a summer popcorn flick, as it never dives deeper than surface level. The film adaptation isn’t worthy of same celebration received by the book, but it finds just enough ways to endure, in large part thanks to its star, the review says:

The film version of Where the Crawdads Sing is a lot more fun as a hothouse page-turner than it is as a soulful tale of feminine self-sufficiency. That it’s able to split the difference between Nicholas Sparks and Nell with any measure of believability is a testament to Daisy Edgar-Jones’ careful performance as Kya Clark.

Owen Gleiberman of Variety , meanwhile, finds Where the Crawdads Sing “compelling,” but says Daisy Edgar-Jones’ Kya is quite “poised” and “refined” for a character who learned to survive on her own and is known as a “wild child.” Overall, Where the Crawdads Sing is as dark as it is romantic, he says:

CINEMABLEND NEWSLETTER

Your Daily Blend of Entertainment News

Where the Crawdads Sing is at once a mystery, a romance, a back-to-nature reverie full of gnarled trees and hanging moss, and a parable of women’s power and independence in a world crushed under by masculine will. ... The ending is a genuine jaw-dropper, and while I wouldn’t go near reveling it, I’ll just say that this is a movie about fighting back against male intransigence that has the courage of its outsider spirit.

If you want to see what all the fuss is about, you’ll be able to check out Where the Crawdads Sing when it hits theaters on Friday, July 22. Until then, be sure to check out our 2022 Movie Release Schedule to see what other films will be gracing a theater near you in the near future.

Heidi Venable is a Content Producer for CinemaBlend, a mom of two and a hard-core '90s kid. She started freelancing for CinemaBlend in 2020 and officially came on board in 2021. Her job entails writing news stories and TV reactions from some of her favorite prime-time shows like Grey's Anatomy and The Bachelor. She graduated from Louisiana Tech University with a degree in Journalism and worked in the newspaper industry for almost two decades in multiple roles including Sports Editor, Page Designer and Online Editor. Unprovoked, will quote Friends in any situation. Thrives on New Orleans Saints football, The West Wing and taco trucks.

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Where the Crawdads Sing: Reese's Book Club (A Novel)

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Where the Crawdads Sing: Reese's Book Club (A Novel) Kindle Edition

Print length 379 pages
Language English
Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
Publisher G.P. Putnam's Sons
Publication date August 14, 2018
File size 4409 KB
Page Flip Enabled
Word Wise Enabled
Enhanced typesetting Enabled
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From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B078GD3DRG
Publisher ‏ : ‎ G.P. Putnam's Sons (August 14, 2018)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 14, 2018
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 4409 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 379 pages
#35 in Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Literary Fiction
#61 in Women's Literary Fiction
#89 in Coming of Age Fiction (Kindle Store)

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About the author

Delia owens.

Delia Owens is the co-author of three internationally bestselling nonfiction books about her life as a wildlife scientist in Africa including Cry of the Kalahari.

She has won the John Burroughs Award for Nature Writing and has been published in Nature, The African Journal of Ecology, and many others.

She currently lives in Idaho. Where the Crawdads Sing is her first novel.

Customer reviews

5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 5 star 81% 13% 3% 1% 1% 81%
5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 4 star 81% 13% 3% 1% 1% 13%
5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 3 star 81% 13% 3% 1% 1% 3%
5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 2 star 81% 13% 3% 1% 1% 1%
5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 1 star 81% 13% 3% 1% 1% 1%

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

Customers say

Customers find the book great, stunning, and worth the time. They describe the writing quality as beautiful, literary, and vivid. Readers describe the storytelling as compelling, intriguing, and truly brings the book to life. They also describe the story as heartbreaking, unforgettable, and unusual. Reader also appreciate the character development, saying they're compelling, multifaceted, and flawed. They mention the emotional content tugs on their heartstrings and gives great insight into the human psyche.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Customers find the book great, stunning, and worth their time. They also say the storyline is beautiful and delves into themes of love.

"...Overall, Where the Crawdads Sing is a stunning debut novel that showcases Delia Owens' talent for storytelling and her deep understanding of human..." Read more

"...the romance in the story adds a tender, sweet layer that feels so genuine. it really got to me...." Read more

"...write this entire review by simply using the copious examples of the gorgeous , sumptuous and sensual language of he novel...." Read more

"...marsh itself and its many inhabitants, including Kya, is worth the price of the book yet the reader gets all these bonuses: a mystery, human survival..." Read more

Customers find the writing quality of the book beautiful, descriptive, and poetic. They also say the book is an easy read with stirring poetry. Readers mention the zoology lessons along with some stirring poetry make it a unique experience.

"...Owens masterfully brings Kya’s world to life with vivid descriptions of the natural landscape and a deep, atmospheric narrative that immerses you..." Read more

"...kya’s connection with the wild around her is so beautifully written , and the way she grows up alone in nature is both heartbreaking and..." Read more

"A nail biter till the end. This book was easy to read and full of mystery, romance, and suspense. It was way better than the movie a must read!!" Read more

"...I didn’t know a sentence could be so full.” He smiled. “That’s a very good sentence . Not all words hold that much.”“..." Read more

Customers find the plot captivating, interwoven among beautiful, haunting words. They also appreciate the thrill, adventure, suspense, and awe. Readers say the story is well-told and transports them into the unique world of the main character.

"...The plot twists and turns are engaging and well-crafted, keeping readers on the edge of their seats as they piece together the mystery alongside Kya...." Read more

"...the themes of survival , resilience, and the deep bond between humans and nature really resonated with me...." Read more

"...This book was easy to read and full of mystery, romance, and suspense . It was way better than the movie a must read!!" Read more

"...up for it by putting you inside an interesting and ultimately surprising courtroom drama ...." Read more

Customers find the story unforgettable, heartbreaking, and beautiful. They say the ending is well-structured and emotional. Readers also mention the book has a lot of twists and turns with a wonderful surprise ending. They also mention that the mystery is handled perfectly.

"...Delia Owens is a breathtaking novel that effortlessly blends mystery, romance , and coming-of-age elements into a beautifully written and emotionally..." Read more

"...anyone who loves stories about overcoming adversity with a blend of mystery and romance . this book has definitely earned a spot in my top favorites...." Read more

"A nail biter till the end. This book was easy to read and full of mystery , romance, and suspense. It was way better than the movie a must read!!" Read more

"...The novel offered not only stunning language, but also a pretty good mystery , that for me became increasingly more..." Read more

Customers find the characters in the book damaged and lovable. They also appreciate the writing.

"...Her character is compelling and multifaceted , and her struggle for survival and acceptance is both heart-wrenching and inspiring...." Read more

"Nicely written and easy to identify with the characters ." Read more

"...characters challenged by real-life issues, with the characters' basic motivations well described and integrated into a story of how the characters..." Read more

"...atmospheric natural landscape descriptions and interesting characters with unique experiences , as well as literary prose, I recommend Swamplandia by..." Read more

Customers find the book sympathetic and moving. They say it tugs at their heartstrings, giving great insight into the human psyche. Readers also mention the book gives lessons in compassion and non-violent resilience.

"...those with Tate Walker and Chase Andrews, are complex and add layers of emotional depth to the story...." Read more

"...if you’re looking for a book that’s beautifully written and emotionally gripping , you have to read where the crawdads sing...." Read more

"This book has it all, mystery, love, sadness and self reflection. It seemed so real I almost wanted to know the person behind the story." Read more

"So many emotions going on in this book, love, hate, pain , grief, forgiveness!..." Read more

Customers find the book thought-provoking, informative, and well-written. They say it touches on sensitive subjects such as child abuse, racism, and masterful characterization. Readers also appreciate the prose and scientific facts. They mention the book resonates with them on many levels.

"...The ending is both satisfying and thought-provoking , leaving a lasting impression...." Read more

"...there’s a quiet strength in kya that i found incredibly empowering , almost like reading a memoir of surviving against all odds...." Read more

"This book has it all, mystery, love, sadness and self reflection . It seemed so real I almost wanted to know the person behind the story." Read more

"...a protagonist that most people would love to root for, and the setting is great ...." Read more

Customers have mixed opinions about the pacing of the book. Some mention it's great, and the story doesn't lag too much. However, others say the book is slow at first and extremely rushed.

"...As she wrote, he said the letters out loud. Softly, slowly ...." Read more

"...The book was uneven to say the least , and it's certainly not going to be on the AP English literature reading list one day...." Read more

"...The first section (‘The Marsh’) of the book is very slowly paced ...." Read more

"...However, the middle slowed down and I almost stopped reading. It became heavy with scientific language and poetry...." Read more

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The 12 best fall books of all time, from classics to thrillers.

It’s officially September, which means one thing: we’re all about the cozy, fall books.

We’ve been avidly reading for years and began producing monthly book reviews once 2024 kicked off. You can say we’re very much immersed in the book community, whether we’re eyeing the new Reese’s Book Club pick or Rory Gilmore’s reading challenge .

Naturally, the Post Wanted team had to put together a curated edit of the best fall books we recommend picking up ASAP. Better yet, we highly encourage you to listen to these titles on Audible , so you can hit your reading goals while on the go.

RELATED : Best thrillers and murder-mystery books

Ahead you’ll find the top books we recommend, spanning different genres with detailed notes for each title. We’re just as excited to cozy up with a blanket and a hot cup of coffee as you are.

Best Fall Books

“where the crawdads sing” by delia owens.

Goodreads rating: 4.38/5 stars

About the book : “Where The Crawdads Sing” by Delia Owens is a compelling blend of mystery and coming-of-age story that follows the life of a solitary young woman who grows up in the marshes of North Carolina and becomes entangled in a murder investigation that reveals deep secrets about her past and the community.

“‘ Where The Crawdads Sing ‘ follows Kya, who learns to raise herself in the wild marshes of North Carolina when she’s abandoned as a little girl,” Witherspoon said. “She gets wrapped up in heart-wrenching loneliness, painfully beautiful romance and even a murder mystery that shocks the community.”

Buy on Hardcover | Buy on Paperback | Buy on Kindle

“The Mother-in-Law” by Sally Hepworth

Goodreads rating: 3.97/5 stars

About the book : “The Mother-in-Law” by Sally Hepworth is a gripping psychological thriller that delves into the complex and often fraught relationship between a woman and her mother-in-law. Over the course of the novel, dark secrets are revealed and hidden tensions threaten to unravel their lives.

Oh, this thriller took us on a ride. Filled with family drama, suspense and engaging characters, “The Mother-in-Law” is a title we still think about.

“The Family Game” by Catherine Steadman

Goodreads rating: 3.84/5 stars

About the book : “The Family Game” by Catherine Steadman is a suspenseful thriller about a woman who becomes entangled in a dangerous and high-stakes game with her fiancé’s wealthy and secretive family, leading to shocking revelations and perilous consequences.

A book so good, we got our entire family hooked to read it next. If you’re a fan of page-turning thrillers with a competitive edge, you’ll become immersed in this sensational plot with twisty turns.

“The Third Gilmore Girl” by Kelly Bishop

Goodreads rating: 4.49/5 stars

About the book : “The Third Gilmore Girl” by Kelly Bishop is a memoir that offers an intimate and insightful look into the actress’s career, focusing on her iconic role as Emily Gilmore on “Gilmore Girls” and her experiences in the entertainment industry.

Welcome to September, the advent of the “Gilmore Girls” binge-watching season on Netflix. What better way to immerse yourself in the autumnal ambiance of the show than with this new title we’re all fishing to read ASAP? You’ll receive a behind-the-scenes look at the show and Bishop’s lively, personal experiences.

Buy on Hardcover | Buy on Kindle

“September” by Rosamunde Pilcher

Goodreads rating: 4.16/5 stars

About the book : “September” by Rosamunde Pilcher is a compelling family saga that explores the intertwining lives of various characters in a picturesque Scottish town, delving into themes of love, loss, and personal growth throughout a transformative autumn.

How could we skip over a title that’s aptly named for the fall season and with a plot that evokes all the fall vibes? “September” by Rosamunde Pilcher is widely loved, immersive, and character-driven: the ideal book to cozy up this next.

“An Ambush of Widows” by Jeff Abbott

Goodreads rating: 3.86/5 stars

About the book : “An Ambush of Widows” by Jeff Abbott is a gripping thriller about two widows who uncover dark secrets and face dangerous conspiracies after their husbands’ deaths, leading them on a high-stakes quest for truth and justice.

We finished this book in a day. Seriously, it’s that good and one of the most jaw-dropping thrillers you’ll read. With one of the most unique plots, too, it’s filled with character drama and multiple perspectives that’ll keep you on your toes.

“Sense and Sensibility” by Jane Austen

Goodreads rating : 4.08/5 stars

About the book : “Sense and Sensibility” by Jane Austen explores the contrasting approaches to love and marriage of two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, as they navigate societal expectations and personal challenges in 19th-century England.

As one of the best classics I’ve read, “Sense and Sensibility” is the underdog novel compared to the author’s “ Pride and Prejudice ” and focuses a bit more on relationship dynamics that are applicable to everyday life.

Buy on Hardcover | Buy on Paperback | Buy on Kindle

RELATED: Best contemporary romance novels

“Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert

Goodreads rating : 3.96/5 stars

About the book : “Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert is an inspiring guide to living a creative life, offering practical advice and encouragement for embracing curiosity, overcoming fear, and pursuing one’s artistic passions with courage and authenticity.

If you’re someone who finds seasonal depression looming, then “Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert is the book for you, to hopefully reinvigorate that inspiration and spark that you may have had in January, when the year began. Filled with practical knowledge and wisdom, it remains one of our favorite nonfiction reads.

“The Long Game” by Elena Armas

Goodreads rating : 3.59/5 stars

About the book : “The Long Game” by Elena Armas is a romantic comedy that follows a determined woman and a charming, strategic football player as they navigate their contrasting ambitions and unexpected chemistry while learning about love and personal growth.

For the perfect fall rom-com, look no further than “The Long Game” by Elena Armas. The small town location is a standout among other relationship-driven fiction books we’ve read, and we loved the chemistry among the love interests, most of all — definitely one of our favorite fall romance books of the year.

Buy on Paperback | Buy on Kindle

“11/22/63” by Stephen King

Goodreads rating : 4.34/5 stars

About the book : “11/22/63” by Stephen King is a sci-fi thriller about a high school teacher who discovers a time portal to the past and attempts to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy, only to face unforeseen consequences and challenges along the way.

“11/22/63” by Stephen King may be the best of Rory Gilmore’s book list. With one of the most engaging plots, King takes you through history in this immersive read that’s action-packed and filled with heart. It’s also a mini-series on Amazon Prime Video .

“Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family” by Robert Kolker

Goodreads rating : 4.16/5 stars

About the book : “Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family” by Robert Kolker is a compelling true crime and psychological exploration of a family grappling with the effects of schizophrenia, revealing both the personal struggles and broader implications of mental illness.

Highly reviewed and one of the best nonfiction books we’ve read, “Hidden Valley Road” is an impeccable, well-written psychological narrative that takes us behind the scenes of a family, making us question relationship dynamics and society at large.

“Beware the Woman” by Megan Abbott

About the book : “Beware the Woman” by Megan Abbott is a tense psychological thriller about a woman’s descent into paranoia and danger as she uncovers unsettling truths within her seemingly idyllic life, challenging her trust and sense of reality.

Found: your next spooky fall read. Filled with what-happens-next energy, “Beware the Woman” is a book that’s so eerie and unpredictable, it’ll have you wanting more.

What is the one book everyone should read?

What you read next is largely dependent on preference, though a hidden gem we wholly recommend is “An Ambush of Widows” by Jeff Abbott . It’s an immersive thriller that we feel isn’t discussed as widely as it should be. Plus, it’ll keep you on your toes.

What is the best Jane Austen book for autumn?

We’ve read all of Jane Austen’s novels and our favorite — though it’s difficult to choose only one – is “Sense and Sensibility.” Its relatability and character dynamics make it stand out from the rest, although all of Austen’s novels are impeccably written.

RELATED : Best #BookTok reads

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‘It Ends with Us’ Overtakes ‘The Fault in Our Stars’ as Blockbuster Global Box Office Run Continues

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While her husband Ryan Reynolds continues to enjoy the record-breaking success of Deadpool & Wolverine , Blake Lively is experiencing a career-high of her own. Her romantic drama film It Ends with Us passed a huge global box office milestone this weekend, as Sony continues to hold off on releasing it on digital streaming platforms. It Ends with Us opened a month ago in the wake of Deadpool & Wolverine ’s blockbuster box office performance, and provided textbook counter-programming for its female-skewing target audience.

With $141 million domestically and another $168 million worldwide, the film’s cumulative global gross now stands at a phenomenal $309 million . This weekend, It Ends with Us overtook the $307 million lifetime global haul of another female-skewing literary adaptation, The Fault in Our Stars . The film had previously out-grossed the similarly targeted titles The Girl on the Train ($173 million), Where the Crawdads Sing ($145 million), and Crazy Rich Asians ($237 million). Movies of this kind have a high benchmark, with the first Twilight grossing over $400 million worldwide, and Fifty Shades of Grey hitting around $570 million globally.

It Ends with Us is the biggest film of Lively’s career , and is currently the 11th-biggest Hollywood hit of the year globally, and the 10th-biggest domestic box office hit of the year . The movie exceeded expectations in its debut, grossing $50 million domestically on the back of positive audience response and a controversy surrounding Lively. She was said to be feuding with the film’s director , and her co-star, Justin Baldoni , and was also criticized for not giving due respect to the film’s central theme of domestic abuse in pre-release interviews, which she subsequently addressed in a social media post.

'It Ends with Us' and 'Deadpool & Wolverine' Have Grossed Over $1.5 Billion Combined

It Ends with Us opened to mixed reviews , and is currently sitting at a 57% “rotten” score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes . But it’s the audience response that has taken it this far; the film was deemed worthy of RT’s newly announced “verified hot” honor, on the strength of its excellent 91% user rating. Produced on a reported budget of $25 million , the movie has already earned 12 times its production cost and is projected to conclude its global box office run with around $340 million.

You can watch It Ends with Us in theaters, and stay tuned to Collider for more updates.

It Ends With Us

Lily believes she's found true love with Ryle, but when a painful incident triggers past trauma, she must decide if love alone can carry her marriage through. However, things are complicated when her first love returns to her life.

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Blake Lively

Where Kamala Harris Stands on the Issues: Abortion, Immigration and More

She wants to protect the right to abortion nationally. Here’s what else to know about her positions.

Share full article

By Maggie Astor

Published July 21, 2024 Updated Aug. 24, 2024

With Vice President Kamala Harris having replaced President Biden on the Democratic ticket, her stances on key issues will be scrutinized by both parties and the nation’s voters.

She has a long record in politics: as district attorney of San Francisco, as attorney general of California, as a senator, as a presidential candidate and as vice president.

Here is an overview of where she stands.

Ms. Harris supports legislation that would protect the right to abortion nationally, as Roe v. Wade did before it was overturned in 2022, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

After the Dobbs ruling, she became central to the Biden campaign’s efforts to keep the spotlight on abortion, given that Mr. Biden — with his personal discomfort with abortion and his support for restrictions earlier in his career — was a flawed messenger. In March, she made what was believed to be the first official visit to an abortion clinic by a president or vice president.

She consistently supported abortion rights during her time in the Senate, including cosponsoring legislation that would have banned common state-level restrictions, like requiring doctors to perform specific tests or have hospital admitting privileges in order to provide abortions.

As a presidential candidate in 2019, she argued that states with a history of restricting abortion rights in violation of Roe should be subject to what is known as pre-clearance for new abortion laws — those laws would have to be federally approved before they could take effect. That proposal is not viable now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe.

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IMAGES

Where the Crawdads Sing (2022)
Movie Review: Where the Crawdads Sing
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Where The Crawdads Sing Film: Everything You Need To Know

COMMENTS

Where the Crawdads Sing movie review (2022)
Where the Crawdads Sing movie review (2022)
Where the Crawdads Sing
Where the Crawdads Sing
'Where the Crawdads Sing' Review: A Wild Heroine, a Soothing Tale
July 13, 2022. Where the Crawdads Sing. Directed by Olivia Newman. Drama, Mystery, Thriller. PG-13. 2h 5m. Find Tickets. When you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our ...
'Where the Crawdads Sing' Review: A Compelling Wild-Child Tale
Adapted from Delia Owens ' debut novel, which has sold 12 million copies since it was published in 2018, the movie is about a young woman whose identity is mired in physical and spiritual ...
Where the Crawdads Sing
Full Review | Oct 3, 2022. Scott Tobias The Reveal (Substack) TOP CRITIC. The PG-13-ness of Where the Crawdads Sing buffs every rough edge off this story—the abuse, the abandonment, the betrayal ...
Movie Review: Where the Crawdads Sing
Movie Review: In Where the Crawdads Sing, a film adaptation of Delia Owens's runaway bestseller, a young North Carolina woman who's lived away from society is accused of murder. Daisy Edgar ...
Where the Crawdads Sing (film)
Where the Crawdads Sing (film)
Where The Crawdads Sing Review: Gorgeous Visuals Clash With
The gorgeously-shot movie is incredibly faithful to the book and will no doubt delight those who have eagerly devoured its pages. However, as a movie, Where the Crawdads Sing stumbles a bit in its transition from page to screen, though it is aided by a great lead performance. Picking up in 1969, the sleepy town of Barkley Cove, North Carolina ...
Where the Crawdads Sing (2022)
Where the Crawdads Sing: Directed by Olivia Newman. With Daisy Edgar-Jones, Taylor John Smith, Harris Dickinson, David Strathairn. A woman who raised herself in the marshes of the Deep South becomes a suspect in the murder of a man with whom she was once involved.
Where the Crawdads Sing Review: Bestseller Becomes Glossy Summer Movie
Sometimes amid a slow-motion vortex of leaves. "Where the Crawdads Sing" Michele K Short. But if Tate thinks the Marsh Girl will always be waiting for him (a girl can only go so far without ...
Daisy Edgar-Jones in 'Where the Crawdads Sing': Film Review
Release date: Friday, July 15. Cast: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Taylor John Smith, Harris Dickinson, Michael Hyatt, Sterling Macer, Jr., David Strathairn. Director: Olivia Newman. Screenwriter: Lucy ...
Where the Crawdads Sing movie review: A glossy, Instagram-primed buffet
Where the Crawdads Sing, having sold more than 12 million copies since its publication in 2018, is the very definition of a literary sensation. It was featured as part of Reese Witherspoon's ...
Where The Crawdads Sing Review
Published on 22 07 2022. Original Title: Where The Crawdads Sing. Translating a much-loved novel to the big screen is always a tricky task. With Delia Owens' Where The Crawdads Sing, which has ...
'Where the Crawdads Sing' review: Good book turned bad movie
Review: 'Where the Crawdads Sing' is the latest literary sensation turned ho-hum movie. Daisy Edgar-Jones and Taylor John Smith in "Where the Crawdads Sing.". (Michele K. Short / Sony) By ...
Where the Crawdads Sing Movie Review
Where the Crawdads Sing Movie Review
Where The Crawdads Sing Reviews Are In, See What Critics Are Saying
Delia Owens took the literary world by storm with her 2018 novel Where the Crawdads Sing, and it was little surprise when the film got picked up to be adapted as a movie. Reese Witherspoon is a ...
'Where the Crawdads Sing' review: Adaptation of Delia Owens's novel
Beautiful shots of marshland and a solid leading performance by Daisy Edgar-Jones aren't enough to save Where the Crawdads Sing from itself.. Director Olivia Newman's film adaptation of the 2018 ...
Where the Crawdads Sing
Kya is an abandoned girl who raised herself to adulthood in the dangerous marshlands of North Carolina. For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" haunted Barkley Cove, isolating the sharp and resilient Kya from her community. Drawn to two young men from town, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world; but when one of them is found dead, she is immediately cast by the community as the main ...
Where the Crawdads Sing Review: A Movie Your Mom Will Love
Where the Crawdads Sing, the adaptation of Delia Owens' bestseller, is a weirdly uncomfortable movie on many levels. ... Movie Reviews. By Alyse Wax. Published Jul 12, 2022. Your changes have been ...
'Where The Crawdads Sing' review: Overblown and tedious drama
Based on controversial author Delia Owens' popular novel, when the dialogue isn't sanitizing abuse and rape, it's waxing poetic about sea creatures, grass and owls. Long stretches of floral ...
Where the Crawdads Sing: Reese's Book Club (A Novel) Kindle Edition
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE—The #1 New York Times bestselling worldwide sensation with more than 18 million copies sold, hailed by The New York Times Book Review as "a painfully beautiful first novel that is at once a murder mystery, a coming-of-age narrative and a celebration of nature." For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North ...
𝓚𝓪𝓼𝓼𝓪𝓷𝓭𝓻𝓪
paperback.library on September 5, 2024: "Review: Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens ️ • synopsis: Kya has only ever known life in the marsh. Soon, Kya finds her family has slowly abandoned her. The marsh is all she has left. When Chase Andrew is murdered in the marsh, Kya becomes the prime suspect. Tails of Kya begin to unfold through court proceedings.
TWISTERS (2024) Movie Reaction & Review!
After watching Twister (1996) Kristen and Vivian watch the follow up film Twisters! Starring Daisy Edgar-Jones (Normal People, Where The Crawdads Sing, Fresh), Glen Powell (Top Gun: Maverick, Hidden Figures, Hit Man) and Anthony Ramos (Hamilton, In The Heights, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts) Twisters follows a group of storm chasers who must confront a series of increasingly powerful ...
The 12 best fall books of all time, from classics to thrillers
"Where the Crawdads Sing" by Delia Owens Amazon. Goodreads rating: 4.38/5 stars. About the book: "Where The Crawdads Sing" by Delia Owens is a compelling blend of mystery and coming-of-age ...
'It Ends with Us' Overtakes 'The Fault in Our Stars ...
The film had previously out-grossed the similarly targeted titles The Girl on the Train ($173 million), Where the Crawdads Sing ($145 million), and Crazy Rich Asians ($237 million).
Where Kamala Harris Stands on the Issues: Abortion, Immigration and
With Vice President Kamala Harris having replaced President Biden on the Democratic ticket, her stances on key issues will be scrutinized by both parties and the nation's voters.. She has a long ...

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