Books To Read if You Loved “Where the Crawdads Sing”

This memoir is simply astounding. Tara Westover recounts her experiences growing up in a survivalist family in the mountains of Idaho—she was so isolated from society that she never received an education and never went to a doctor. Her family, like Kya’s, was torn apart by abuse. Tara’s story is similar to Kya’s because despite the isolation and familial hardships she faces, she embodies strength and independence and achieves great success without having a typical education. If ever there was a book you should read, it’s this one.

Set in Trinidad, Golden Child follows a family tirelessly working to get by. Clyde works long shifts at the petroleum plant, his wife Joy takes care of the house, and their twin boys, Peter and Paul, travel great distances every day to attend school. Peter is beloved by his community, while Paul, often considered odd, is more of an outcast. But when an unthinkable accident occurs, everything they’ve been working toward comes crashing down. Like in Where the Crawdads Sing, we see how inviting a community can be toward those already in the fold, and how punishing and dangerous they can be, to those who are considered different.

Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members for insurance money in the 1970s. With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last victim. Sitting in the audience during the vigilante’s trial was Harper Lee, the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning To Kill a Mockingbird. Lee spent a year in town reporting, working on her own version of the case. In Furious Hours, Casey Cep brings this story to life. If you loved the history of the South and the courtroom drama and suspense that was laced throughout Where the Crawdads Sing, you’ll want to pick up this book.

Tasked with finding the reincarnation of a great spiritual teacher, two estranged twin brothers must explore the vast Mongolian landscape in search of the lama. Throughout their journey they will grapple with questions of faith, but also about matters of love and brotherhood. It is a smart and entertaining examination of how people stick to their convictions and discover meaning in a fast-changing world, just like Kya who knew what she wanted despite the fact that almost every person she met wanted to change and mold her to their own image of what a young girl should be.

Myra Lamb is a wild girl with mysterious blue eyes who grows up on remote Bloodroot Mountain. She is wild, strong, and independent, and her grandmother Byrdie protects her fiercely and passes down “the touch” that bewitches people and animals alike. But when John Odom tries to tame Myra, it sparks a shocking disaster, ripping lives apart. This book is a dark and riveting story of faith and family secrets, passion and loss. You’ll plow through the pages of Bloodroot and find that in many ways, Myra is like Kya: she grew up in isolation, she is independent and untamed, and a man tries to change her. Plus, the details of the setting in southern Appalachia are remarkable.

Kya Clark’s family wanted to be a loving and successful family, but forces both external and internal made it so difficult that the pressure was too much to bear. In Vinod Busjeet’s sweeping debut, we find another family on the island of Mauritius, the descendants of indentured servants who struggle to create a better life under colonial rule. However, where Kya’s family crushes under the weight, this family will do anything for its children to thrive.

Tate and Kya had an unbreakable bond—a love so strong and so natural that it was as if they were a part of one another, and they always found themselves drawn back together. Normal People contains a similar love story—a story of mutual fascination, friendship, and love. It centers around two people, Connell and Marianne, over their high school and college years. Prepare to feel all the feels as Sally Rooney takes you on a journey that follows two people who love each other with everything they have, even when they try to stay apart.

Probably Ruby follows Ruby, an Indigenous woman who was adopted by white parents. Her adoptive parents never really understand her heritage, so in her thirties Ruby sets out to find her birth parents and try to put the pieces together in search of her own true identity. Like Kya, Ruby is an unapologetic woman who, despite unwelcome advice from those around her, finally takes control of her own life.

From the 1920s to 1950, Georgia Tann ran a black-market baby business at the Tennessee Children’s Home Society in Memphis. She offered up more than 5,000 orphans, hiding the fact that many weren’t orphans at all but stolen children of poor families, single mothers, and women told in maternity wards that their babies had died. Before and After is a collection of the compelling, poignant true stories of these victims that inspired Lisa Wingate’s bestselling novel Before We Were Yours. In Where the Crawdads Sing, Kya didn’t have a stable family and was unable to reunite with her mother who left when she was a young child. These true stories capture the same heartbreak, but many of the children have joyfully reunited with family in the final decades of their lives.

Where Kya was perfectly content to remain invisible to those around her, sixteen-year-old Mei, dreams of becoming a model revolutionary. When the Communist Party recruits her for a mysterious duty in China’s capital, she seizes the opportunity and eventually becomes the confidant of Chairman Mao. But as she sees more and more brutality in the name of progress, she begins to doubt everything she thought she knew. These books are very different, but at the heart of them both they deal with issues of power, manipulation, belief, and being true to yourself, as seen through the eyes of two passionate teenage girls.

Out of the Easy is a beautiful work of historical fiction that centers around a young and misunderstood female protagonist. Sound familiar? It’s set in 1950, as the French Quarter of New Orleans simmers with secrets, and follows 17-year-old Josie Moraine, who’s known among locals as the daughter of a brothel worker. Josie wants more out of life than the Big Easy has to offer, so she devises a plan to get out, but a mysterious death in the Quarter leaves Josie tangled in an investigation that will challenge her allegiance to her mother, her conscience, and Willie Woodley, the brusque madam on Conti Street. If you fell in love with Kya and her independence, you’ll also fall in love with Josie, and you’ll ache for her as she faces hatred from her fellow townspeople, just as you did for Kya.

Song of a Captive Bird tells the story of one of Iran’s most famous female poets, a woman who denied her society’s strict restrictions of women, and became a voice to inspire generations. Growing up in Tehran, Forugh Farrokhzad was told to be quiet and modest, and so Forugh found an outlet in writing poetry. But as she grew older, she refused to be silenced and set out to make her voice heard.

For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home. Where the Crawdads Sing is a reminder that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.