Books like Where the Crawdads Sing
What should you read after Delia Owens’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- Delia Owens
- 2018
- 384 pages
- Fiction
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after Where the Crawdads Sing
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchThe Great Alone
Kristin Hannah
Alaska instead of the marsh: a girl raised off-grid by a volatile father, learning the landscape better than anyone and falling for the wrong boy in it.
- Growing up alone
- Nature writing
- First love
- Domestic violence throughout
Best for a murder trialTo Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee
The trial half of Crawdads comes more or less straight from here: a Southern courtroom, a town that has already decided, and a defendant with no chance.
- A murder trial
- An outsider against a town
- The marsh
- Child narrator, 1930s Alabama
Best for nature writingProdigal Summer
Barbara Kingsolver
Kingsolver writes Appalachian woods with an actual biologist's eye, and like Owens she lets the ecology carry as much of the book as the people do.
- Nature writing
- The marsh
- First love
- No crime, no courtroom
Best for growing up aloneEducated
Tara Westover
The true version of the same childhood: no school, no doctors, a family that constitutes the entire world, and a girl who teaches herself out of it.
- Growing up alone
- An outsider against a town
- Nature writing
- Memoir, not fiction
Great matchThe Secret Life of Bees
Sue Monk Kidd
A runaway girl taken in by three beekeeping sisters in 1960s South Carolina — the same Southern heat and the same found belonging, without the body.
- Growing up alone
- An outsider against a town
- First love
- No mystery, no trial
Worth a look — with a warningMy Absolute Darling
Gabriel Tallent
The unsentimental version of a girl raised feral by one man: Tallent writes the wilderness beautifully and the abuse inside it without any softening whatsoever.
- Growing up alone
- Nature writing
- First love
- Graphic sexual abuse by a parent
What should you read after Where the Crawdads Sing?
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens works on several levels at once, and which book you should read next depends on which of those levels got you. For most readers the closest match is The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah — alaska instead of the marsh: a girl raised off-grid by a volatile father, learning the landscape better than anyone and falling for the wrong boy in it.
If what stayed with you was a murder trial, read To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee instead: the trial half of Crawdads comes more or less straight from here: a Southern courtroom, a town that has already decided, and a defendant with no chance. Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver is the other strong option — kingsolver writes Appalachian woods with an actual biologist's eye, and like Owens she lets the ecology carry as much of the book as the people do.
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