In my previous post I wrote about starting a book club. In this post I plan to tell you how the first meeting went and give you a little review of our first read.

I love to plan ahead and have themes for gatherings. I had decided that my food would be themed after the book Where the Crawdads Sing.

Book Club — The Food

I made pudding cups that looked like sandy beaches, decorated with mini Swedish fish; had sliced watermelon, bottled water & lemonade, a plate of Madeline cookies (they look like shells), and a bowl filled with individual bags of potato chips and fish crackers (labeled the bowl “Fish & chips”). I used seashore decorations — cocktail napkins decorated with crawfish, a bowl filled with shells, and a jar filled with feathers I have found over the years.

Gifts for my Guests

I made special gifts for my guests — a stemless wineglass filled with gummy worms (labeled “book worms”), a feather shaped bookmark, and an individualized library book card.

These little things set the stage for a fun evening spent talking about this wonderful book. Everyone agreed that I had set the bar high for the next hostess. While that was certainly not my intention, it did make me happy they noticed the thought I had put into this evening.

The Book Review

Where the Crawdads Sing was a quick read. It is the type of book that sucks you in and takes you away. It is basically the story of a young girl, Kya, who grows up in the marshlands of North Carolina. She is the daughter of an alcoholic father and a mother who leaves for good when Kya is only 6. One by one her siblings leave until she is left alone with the absentee father. Her favorite brother, Jodie, is the last to leave. I, personally, didn’t understand why he didn’t take Kya with him, but then again if he did we would have no story.

At age 10, Kya’s dad leaves for good. When Kya is 14 she is befriended by a boy named Tate. They become very close and it appears they will end up together. When Tate leaves for college he promises to return to see Kya but, of course, he breaks that promise and Kya’s heart in the process. Into the storyline comes the town heartthrob, Chase, who eventually sweeps Kya off her feet, but his intentions are not in her best interest. Again, Kya’s heart is broken. The story continues to follow Kya’s life’s ups and downs, eventually leading to her being blamed for Chase’s murder. A trial scene takes over the story and the reader is left wondering if she was guilty. I will leave the ending a surprise for when you read the book.

Pros of the Book

We all agreed we really liked this book. It was a page-turner. For someone who grew up on the beach, I loved the imagery. It made me yearn for summer days spent looking for shells in the sand. I am a collector of feathers, so that part of the storyline was really enjoyable. This was a great book to read for our first book club meeting.

Cons of the Book

We agreed on a few points that didn’t make sense to us. The main character, Kya, spoke too clearly for someone who had always lived in the swamps. Her language skills were too polished. Some of us weren’t sure how a young child was left to fend for herself for so long in such a deserted environment, but then again, we weren’t sure how Child Protective Services worked in the time period of the book. We did not find the trial storyline plausible that Kya could have come up with such an elaborate plan to come back to town in the middle of the night from a book publishing trip, when she had never traveled very far alone.

Book Club Conclusion

Our takeaway was that overall we really enjoyed this book. Several of us later went to see the movie and were pleasantly surprised with how much it followed the book. In our collective experience movies based on books do not always deliver. I will place a link to Amazon so that you can get yourself a copy of this book. Read it and let me know what you think.