Might even be a good movie

 Where the Crawdads Sing
by Delia Owens

An audiobook that left me speechless. It's just so freaking beautiful!

Sad stuff happens, of course. A lot of it. And good stuff happens. And magical, wonderful stuff.  Wings fly through every page--and waves, and rustling marsh grasses in the wind, and frogs, salamanders, snakes and grass flowers and always the gulls overhead and the salt slough beneath. It made me want to plan a camping trip to South Carolina (or was it North?) immediately. But I wouldn't see what she saw.

Funny...I took a quick look at Goodreads to try and figure out where it was set and ran into a reviewer who diss'ed it severely. The reviewer had a few of what I'd call legitimate beefs--leaden dialog (I never noticed it), flat characters (yeah, but I let that pass). But then he or she bellyached that "even though it was set in the south during the civil rights era, it never touched on that subject." So? This is a work of <i>fiction</i>, not a textbook!   Civil rights didn't happen to fit into the story she was telling, but somehow she was supposed to cram some in just to make the book historically relevant?  Was it her job to tell the whole complete story of the Southern United States during the 1950s, or just a sweet little story about a young girl growing up in a swamp?  Was she supposed to bring in the Sputnik Launch--even though the girl didn't have a TV?  Maybe the author could have had her wander down the street and overhear it on a radio broadcast.

Sheez, what a doofus reviewer.  Please, people, keep your comments fair and review a book on what it's really about, not what you think it could have been about.