I really enjoyed this story, but I also really enjoy some of the negative reviews here. I do see a lot of wish fulfillment and mirroring of the author's own life here, some of it troubling, see the Atlantic article (www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2022/07/where-the-crawdads-sing-delia-mark-owens-zambia-murder/670479/). This book stretched the bounds of my suspension of disbelief, but it was still a nice story. Maybe a bit Hallmark-esque, but nice anyway.