Overall, what do you think of Waiting for the Night Song (no spoilers in this thread please) 

Overall, what do you think of Waiting for the Night Song? No spoilers in this thread please.

Overall, it was a pretty good mystery. I was hoping for a little more of the conservation piece. I didn’t really see it as a love song to the beauty around us.

For the most part, I liked it. I got tired of the conservation stuff. I also thought the stuff with Ryan was disjointed. Was he a good guy or a bad guy? I felt sorry for Garrett as a child, and could understand why Clyde did the things he did. I wasn't entirely sympathetic to Cadie. I would probably give it a three out of five stars.

I would rate it a rounded-up to 4. I did expect a little more emphasis on the difficulties of conservation; in fact that was part of the reason behind my request. Also, there were parts of the book where Cadie's personality seemed to suddenly change, and I found her to be irritating. She was supposed to be this determined conservationist and then in scene after scene she starts shaking and trembling and getting so nervous that she either vomits, almost vomits, or has to hold on to something/someone to keep from fainting - or she just blurts out information "without thinking" [chapter 22.] These borderline hysterical scenes did not seem to jive with Cadie in the rest of the book.

I thought it was just okay and would not recommend it to my friends. If I were rating it, a 3/5 would be about right. Like others, I found it disjointed. The cover reminded me immediately of “Where the Crawdads Sing,” and it seemed that the author attempted to address some of the same issues, not only the environmental ones, but also the psychological ones. In both novels, no one is all good or all bad. While I wasn’t the biggest fan of “Crawdads,” I liked this novel much less.

I liked it overall. At times, it was slow. I got tired of some of the environmental agenda. I liked the dual timeline and the mystery aspect.

I think there was a good story in the mind of the author; however, it is insulting to have said author repeat basic facts in the book. It ended up being extremely boring because the ending was easily figured out and no emotion for the characters was set. Very disappointing.

I really wanted to like this book but I just could not get into it.

Overall I enjoyed it. At times the premise reminded me of Prodigal Summer or Where the Crawdads Sing but the writing was not as good. It was an interesting mystery though.

Hi all! I do agree with a lot of what has been said so far, and it's not quite a 5-star book for me either. That said, what I really loved was the portrayal of Cadie and Daniela's friendship and how that friendship carried across generations (in regards to Cadie's relationship both Sal and Daniela's parents). I also admired how well-researched the environmentalism thread was and I thought the mystery was a gripping centerpiece to hold the whole story together. All things considered I thought it was a compelling and occasionally illuminating read.

I felt the book was disjointed. It did not hold my interest and I would not recommend it to my friends or my book club.

I thought it was a well written book. The descriptions in the book were well done and I liked that it jumped from present to past to tell the story.

I feel like if this novel was developed further, lengthened and polished it could be a 4. But it just wasn't it for me. The writing was choppy, and I don't mean the past and present chapters woven together, I mean sometimes paragraph to paragraph it was clear they were spliced. The author also used the exact same sentence structure to describe scenes and I found it a bit boring to trudge through. There were also several scenes that were so painfully unrealistic to me (re: the bear). I won't be recommending the book to my friends/family but I wouldn't say the novel was a total bust.

Like others, I wasn't overly excited about this book. I'm not entirely sure if this book is about friendship, romance, climate change, immigration, forest fires or entomology.  All of these themes are in the book, but none of them are fully developed so I never developed an interest in any of them.    The writing style is geared more towards young adult readers and it was a quick read.  

I think that Julie Dalton stretched herself a great deal for a first novel, tackling global warming and immigration with a bit of a murder mystery thrown in. And I feel it was very well written and enjoyable to read.

Overall, I would rate the novel a 4 because as a reader I felt involved with the characters lives, decisions, emotions and thought processes. As with other books that I structure of the book of going back to their youth and the incident that was one of the central themes and then to present takes the reader time to adjust their reading expectations.

Overall I would give it a good rating. Sometimes I had a hard time following the dialog between Cadie and Daniela. In some cases it seemed a little repetitive. I liked/appreciated the ecological aspects of the book.

I have to agree with most of the people here. It was okay--mildly entertaining, but I was underwhelmed. Nothing about the story felt entirely fleshed out so I did have a hard time connecting with any of it. It's not a book I would recommend to a friend.

I really had a hard time getting into this book, to be honest I was a bit disappointed. I felt that I was being "Talked down to" by the author and really didn't connect to the characters. Just wasn't for me, but not all books are for everyone I guess.

I found the book difficult to read. I agree with Amber. There were so many threads that were not fully developed. The conservation issue could have been a central part of the story but really got lost!

I didn't love it, but it grew on me a bit as I read it. Although I like being outdoors in nature, I am not particularly fond of reading about nature or environmental issues. The mystery aspect of it was ok, but I didn't really connect with the characters.

I would give the book a rating of Average. Given the topic in the book summary I was enthusiastic initially because the theme included climate change. I was engaged through the first chapter or so when Cadie was investigating in the woods; however, the story went on to other subjects and lost its climate change focus. This book would be more likely to succeed with a younger and less sophisticated target audience than Bookbrowse provides. Long-term Bookbrowse readers are used to a lot of excellent character development with well-defined themes throughout a book.

I had a challenging time getting into the book. I started a few times, then put it down. Finally got going. Would rate it a strong 3 out if 5. Many have compared it to Where The Crawdads Sing; however, ai loved that book. I was actually relieved it was a fairly short book.

I agree with my fellow Bookbrowsers. The book was not memorable. There were flashes of beautiful descriptions of nature and some interesting character development but too much was going on with multiple themes of climate change, adolescent female friendships, illegal immigrants, murder and the switching from past to present.
Two weeks after I finished the book, I couldn’t remember any details. Not a good sign for me.

I have to agree with the majority of the reviewers who felt that the book was underwhelming. I too expected more about conservation. Instead, it was a murder mystery/love story/immigration dilemma. Somewhere in there lies a good story, but not this one!

I actually saw this as a platform to push changing immigration and environment laws. It seemed the characters were just added to make the political content more readable. My best part of the book was Cadie and the Summer Kid exchanging books and messages

I just binge read this novel and I find the reviews strange. I actually found this a book that got my attention from the beginning and held it. The topical issues of fire, climate change, academic restrictions, anti-science bigotry, and racism were all an important backdrop for the main themes of friendship, secrets and tragic bad decisions. It needed tighter editing but I found the issues and characters interesting .As an avid reader of mysteries, this did not satisfy me as a good mystery. The descriptions of nature and the complications of friendship and family were what kept my interest .

I liked the dual timeline. I thought the characters were well drawn but I thought there were some pacing issies.

I had really mixed reactions. I liked the book, the story, the whole thing but from what I am reading....not as much as most of your readers. I thought it was slow. Especially at the beginning....I worried about it getting too political but Dalton managed to hold back a little...All that said, I am a character person...There has to be someone (not necessarily the main character or narrator) that I care about....that didn't happen for me here. I never really cared about Sadie.

This book was disappointing to me. The first chapter was boring and I would have preferred it to delve into the mystery sooner. The characters were rather superficial and I could not feel much kinship with any of them. I would not recommend it to friends; I’d give it a 3/5

To be honest, reading this book was a chore. It was rather slow and wordy. I also had difficulty engaging with the characters. The story lines were too diverse and character development was rather weak. In the writing I could detect a glimmer of Kingsolver, but the glimpse made it all the more unsatisfying. I would not recommend this book, it was quite a disappointment.

I thought it was a good mystery. That being said I would have liked more about Cadie's work since it kept popping up. Maybe if the author had just stuck with a mystery it would have been better because the rest of it seemed to be another story and seemed to be a distraction.

I really enjoyed the story not only because of the many wonderful characters but also because of it's emphasis on environmental issues and how we learn something new everyday about how to care for our world.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. I didn't figure it out until almost the end. The characters were interesting and enjoyable. I did feel that sometimes it got a little bit preachy, especially in regard to immigration issues.