I am warning you, there are spoilers. I believe the movie was better than the book. Most of the time that’s not the case. Typically, movies miss important details or change the story line. In addition, movies are a director’s perspective where books are left to the reader’s imagination. In this case, the movie was much better.

The story was lovely. It was a romance and murder mystery all in one. However, the book had many details. It was not a very exciting book, occasionally the book was interesting and action packet. Nonetheless, most of the book was dull.

The movie definitely left a few parts of her childhood out. The book clearly spelled out the timeline, but during the movie I was confused how old Kya was at times. For example, when she first learned to read and when she meet Tate she was age 14. If I did not read the book I would not have known. I felt like her age throughout the events was an important piece of context.

It is probably hard to find actors that look like all the younger parts of Kya because everything past age 6 was the same woman. This made it hard to understand what part of life Kya was going through.

Honestly, I loved the movie. One of the best parts was watching Taylor John Smith, the actor who played Tate. His looks are captivating on screen. In both the book and movie I was rooting for Tate.

Personally I hated the other love interest, Chase. I thought he was a terrible person. I hated the way he treated Kya, forcing her to do things she was not ready for, and cheating on her. The entire time they were “together” he was engaged.

Tate on the other hand, perfect. Tate taught Kya to read, took it slow and truly loved her. Tate did leave Kya and did not come back when he said he would, which honestly made me mad. Tate was a chicken, but eventually came back when he realized how much he loved Kya. Above all, Tate never cheated on Kya.

I was secretly very happy when they revealed Kya had killed chase all along. I need to know how she did it. She had a perfect alibi. I wish they would have written or shown how Kya killed Chase.

Overall, “Where the Crawdads Sing” is a great story and, the movie was excellent. The book however, was written with too many details which made it very hard to find the motivation to finish the book.