I read Crow Talk immediately after finishing The Music of Bees. I absolutely love this author's writing style and themes of nature. Crow Talk started slower for me and I had difficulty feeling invested in the story and characters initially. But after giving it some time, the story picked up and the last half of the book flowed quickly.

Frankie is a graduate student whose graduate career isn't ending like she planned. That combined with grieving the loss of her father, she is struggling and returns to the summer cottage her family owns on Lake June. She's looking forward to being alone in nature and focus her attention into her thesis. But she's not alone. The Magnusen family has also arrived and the last thing she wants is to deal with Tim Jr. and his wife and son. Anne Magnusen arrives at the cottage after a public meltdown results in a temporary leave from her job. In addition to her job, her son has stopped speaking suddenly and doctors have not been able to provide an answer. As a result, her relationship with her husband is strained. They retreat to the lake cottage in hopes of finding answers. But both Anne and Frankie will find so much more than they imagined, including a lesson in crow talk.

I loved the nature theme throughout this book and I especially loved the setting and how the author beautifully described Lake June. This book was full of emotion and I loved the hope and comfort it provided. I also really appreciated the insight into crows and the role nature plays in our own lives.

The book moved slowly at first but ultimately I ended up really enjoying it.

Thanks to Netgalley for the digital copy of this book.

While it took me a long time to get into Crow Talk, once I was in, I was obsessed. The visual of the Pacific Northwest is absolutely stunning, and Eileen Garvin does it so much justice in how she captures its beauty.

CROW TALK by Eileen Garvin (The Music of Bees) is a beautiful story as much about nature and birds as it is about people. The setting is a remote collection of summer homes near a lake by Hood River, Oregon. Garvin says she only imagined June Lake, but finds it a welcome "place of refuge" and hopes her readers will, too. That peacefulness is what Mary Francis (call me Frankie) O'Neill is seeking when she heads to her family's caretaker cottage near the end of the season. She is still grieving her father's death; plus, her plans to be the first in her family to obtain a master's degree in the ornithology field have been thwarted by a vindictive advisor. Life feels overwhelming and uncertain. The loneliness, grief, and unhappiness are echoed by Annie Ryan, Irish musician and daughter-in-law to one of the long-established summer families. Annie and husband Tim have brought their five-year-old, Aiden. Once a cheerful, outgoing little boy, he no longer speaks, but manages to establish a rapport with Frankie and with Charlie Crow, a young, injured bird that she nurses back to health. Gavin intersperses many facts (and even idioms) about birds; for example, that there are roughly two thousand distinct species, that a group of hummingbirds is called a glittering, and that birds may have capacity for facial recognition (see 2014 TedTalk by Dr. John Marzluff). Told from multiple viewpoints, CROW TALK received a starred review from Booklist ("A stunning affirmation of nature's power to soothe and rejuvenate."). Despite the sadness, readers will revel in a positive ending, all while feeling as though they are forest bathing due to Garvin’s vivid descriptions.

TedTalk Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fiAoqwsc9g

Thank you to NetGalley and Dutton for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Pub Date: April 30, 2024

3.5 stars
It kept my attention while I was reading but I didn't find myself thinking about it when I wasn't reading it - but I tend to struggle with contemporary books. If you love the contemporary genre I highly recommend Eileen Garvin's work, I think she is great writer! Plus I love all the bird info in this one.

I loved this book so much!! A moving story about the way two women's lives become intertwined in a small lake community as they share a connection with a special young neurodivergent boy. Garvin does such a great job exploring what it's like to parent a nonverbal, autistic child and the guilt and depression that can come with motherhood. I was also really fascinated with the focus on crows and the "language" of crows. Excellent on audio narrated by Helen Laser and perfect for fans of authors like Richard Powers. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital copy in exchange for my honest review!

I had already read the author’s previous novel The Music of Bees so I was excited to get to read this book thru NetGalley. It’s a heartwarming story of 2 young women, their professional passions, their families while they individually navigate the grief of a loss of a dead person. It’s extremely well written and enjoyable to read

I requested this book solely from the blurb and the stunning cover art, I'd not read Eileen Garvin's debut, "The Music of Bees," but I will be fixing that very soon. I deeply loved this book, I am still carrying it with me over month after finishing it and it's taken me time to write a review because I don't know how to do it justice. I would describe this book as part bildungsroman, part family saga, part nature story - all storytelling tropes that I gravitate toward. Each character is so thoughtfully created, but Frankie and Anne especially are incredible, I want to know them and continue to hear about their families. I hated saying goodbye to them (and Aiden) at then end of the book. Each time I sat down with this book, I felt the rest of world slip away. The setting is in the PNW is lush and will make you want to escape to a remote cabin too! I picked up a hard copy of this one for my collection just as soon as I could. I imagine I will reread this one again soon and be picking up Garvin's first novel soon too.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an eARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Okay, I'm biased. I grew up near the Yakama reservation, with Mt Adams on the horizon. So of course the setting--on a beautiful lake near White Salmon & Hood River resonated with both my youthful memories and my adult experiences, still living in the Pacific Northwest.

I specifically appreciated the multi-generational storylines and dual protagonists as a way to show many different factors that go into feeling "stuck" and in need of a pause button to reflect and plot out a new direction. Having both a mother and an independent woman both struggling to connect with lives not led (or not being all they're cracked up to be) offered a nice counterbalance and variety that helped the pacing and overall character beats.

Oh, and birds! Can't forget the birds. I love the specificity about nature and the unknowable nature of how other creatures find their way out of difficulty. It would be easy to fall into wistful anthropomorphism with a tale incorporating birds at such a fundamental level, but Eileen Garvin does a great job of presenting the truly unknowable less and a code to be cracked and more as a mystery to reflect on and take inspiration from. I really appreciate the idea that nature has more to teach us than we can understand, and that stopping to observe and reflect is worth the time.

There is no real romance in the novel, yet it is a perfect love story. The author paints the natural world in the PNW in the most wonderful way. It's a book that checked all of the boxes for me. There are engaging characters and well developed relationships between parents and children, friends and neighbors and partners The environment shapes the characters as both a healing force and something to be reckoned with. Most of all the crows carried the book for me, the tiny fables interspersed with information about the birds made the pacing perfect. A sweet book without being too much. Delightful!

📚 Book Review 📚

Crow Talk takes place on the fictional island of June Lake set in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest. Frankie O'Neill has come to her family's small cottage to finish her dissertation on the spotted owl. On the other side of the lake, Anne Ryan has arrived with her husband Tim and their son 5-year old son Aiden who has stopped talking. Both women have suffered losses and we learn about these and their reverberations in the women's lives as the novel unfolds. When Frankie finds an injured crow and begins to nurse it back to life, she captures Aiden's attention and begins to build a relationship with him and his mother Anne. Together, all three find healing in their bonds with one another and with the natural world that surrounds them.

I found Crow Talk a really good read! Chapters move back and forth between Frankie's and Anne's perspectives, slowly revealing the secrets and burdens each has brought with them to the lake. I liked that every chapter began with a fact about crows and their behaviors. These short epigraphs provided a frame of reference for the chapter but also reinforced the symbiotic relationship between humans and the natural world.

While I found the ending a bit too "neat," I enjoyed the journey the book took me on and think most readers will enjoy it as well!

3.75-4 ⭐s

Thank you to @netgalley for an ARC. Crow Talk is published by @duttonbooks and is available now!

Any book with the word “crow” (or any kind of bird) in it, is going to gain my attention. I absolutely love birds from the corvid family (including our resident ravens), so I really adored the bird facts and bird interactions in this book. Charlie Crow stole my heart. I also greatly appreciated the artful way the author wove into the story themes about communication – not only among bird families, abut also human families. It was an illuminating way to illustrate the unique ways some humans communicate.

The author did her research, also, with music, and I found those chapters equally illuminating, as music is another form of human communication. The story touches on fitting in, loss/grief, and the ways we can heal not only through nature but through nurture. Frankie and Anne found a soft spot in my heart for the few weeks I read along. I’d like to go spend time in Frankie’s cabin!

3.5 rounded up, because the ending was so tidy and bow-wrapped. Readers of upmarket women’s fiction will find this a fantastic addition to their shelves.

I found this book to be a bit wordy, with a lot going on without much actually happening. I had a hard time connecting with the story as it read more like a textbook in many areas. The folk tale sections and info on crows felt stuffed into the pages rather than woven into the story.

Thank you to Dutton Books for the advance reading copy provided via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

I enjoyed this book but had a hard time comprehending some of it. It felt like there were a lot of jumping around. Anne's POV confused me due to it. I loved this authors last book so incredibly much. Thank you for this chance! (3.5 stars)

A slow, but engaging read . I suppose this book is about grief , but it is also about relationships with family and friends and communication .Both Anne and Frankie have their own far reaching problems in their work and personal lives when they meet each other at a remote location in Washington state. This book is written from each of their viewpoints in turn . The writing is believable and thoughtful . Descriptions of the wildlife and countryside interesting and well done.

Unfortunately DNF'd this about 100 pages in. Very dense, dry writing more reminiscent of an informative article rather than novel.

Crow Talk is one of those books that sneak up on you as you read them. I was slow to warm up to Mary Francis O'Neill, the young woman at the heart of Crow Talk, and early on she is so geographically and socially isolated that I began to wonder if I ever would. It's not that "Frankie" is an unimpressive woman. As noted in the novel's very first paragraph, Frankie is first in her University of Washington graduate school class, was the first female from her high school to win a "full ride" to that school, and was even the first in her family to earn a bachelor's degree of any kind. And then there's the revealing kicker: she's also the first on either side of her family to reach the ripe old age of twenty-six without giving birth.

Frankie has come to June Lake to regroup. She's frustrated and she's running from something, and the empty family cottage feels like her only refuge, a place where she can finally finish her thesis before getting on with the rest of her life. But there is obviously more to the story, and layer by layer, Frankie's past, her family dynamics, and the shakiness of her future are revealed. Frankie is unemployed (and perhaps unemployable), homeless, friendless, barely speaking to her family, and simply out of options. It is June Lake or nothing, even if she is the only one on the isolated lake as winter approaches.

Then Aiden, a little autistic boy who suddenly stopped speaking a few months earlier, and Charlie, a baby crow with an injured leg, change everything. Frankie might not be able to heal herself or her family, but she's a natural when it comes to Aiden and Charlie, both of whom seem to recognize just how important Frankie might turn out to be in their own worlds. And maybe, just maybe, Aiden and Charlie Crow can return the favor.

It was only after finishing Crow Talk that I realized how fully invested I had become in the Frankie O'Neill character and how real she felt to me. Eileen Garvin has created a unique little world here filled with people I hated to see leave my own. Sure, her story is heartwarming and inspirational, but it's more than that. Much like Garvin's previous novel, The Music of Bees, Crow Talk is a painless science lesson. I came away from The Music of Bees understanding and appreciating more about the importance of bees and the intricacies of beekeeping than I ever expected to know. Crow Talk taught me about the fascinating life cycle of crows and the way that crows can interact with humans, even to recognizing the faces of their "allies."

Eileen Garvin has become an author I trust, and I can't wait to see what she has to teach me next time around.

This is my first Eileen Garvin read and I am not really sure what I have been doing with my life but adding the rest of her backlist to my TBR is first on my to-do list this week!

Garvins writing, the characters, the plot, and how I felt reading this book all made this a book I will remember for some time to come.

I found that this is a slower moving read. I really took my time with it reading a few chapters at a time allowing myself time to really absorb the story and I recommend you do the same. I also really loved all the details and facts about crows. I see them all the time but now have a new understanding of the species and have shared a few of the facts with people around me. The crow represented a lot of the themes of the story which I also really enjoyed and especially feel in love with Charlie Crow and Aiden.

I love characters that are harder to get to know and understand but once you do they are characters that leave a lasting impression. Both Charlie Crow and Aiden were that for me and I really can’t wait for you to meet them. How both help other characters in the story reflect and grow was very heartwarming and thought provoking. The characters explore themes of grief, healing, friendship, and what it means to find yourself again and they are so incredibly relatable.

While this story was a slow burn, it really snuck up on me at the end and I found myself so overcome with so many feelings. I really don’t remember the last story I read where that happened. I found so much hope in this story and don’t think I will ever look at crows the same way again.

After reading the book, I immediately searched for other reviews to help process my thoughts. While concept of the story is wonderful, and the setting was impressive, I had a hard time connecting with the characters and sinking into the book on a whole. However, I think it might be a timing issue, and just not the right story for me at the moment. Other readers wrote lovely reviews about their experience, I just unfortunately couldn’t match them.

I’ve been sitting on this review for awhile now, and I still don’t think I have all the words to accurately describe how much I love this book.

Crow Talk follows four main characters as they descend upon June Lake for some much needed perspective on their lives. Each character is facing what feels like an insurmountable struggle with no options forward, forcing them to turn to solitude.

This novel is a masterclass on the complexities of grief, the importance of friendship, and the profound impact nature has on our healing. Garvin’s writing style is as captivating as her characters are elaborate. She also has the talent of creating a setting so believable, you might just find yourself rocking slightly as you read about the list of a boat. From the very first page, I knew I was going to absolutely love this book.

Crow Talk gets an easy 5/5 stars from me (and my first one of 2024)! Despite finishing this book over two months ago, I’ve thought about it nearly every day since. If you’re looking for your next favorite read, I highly recommend picking up Crow Talk! As always, please check the content warnings before enjoying.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Dutton for this ARC!

Frankie O’Neill is an ornithologist working to save her dissertation about the spotted owl following trouble with her advisor. When she heads to her family’s summer home on Beauty Bay in the dead of winter, she encounters Anne Ryan, an Irish musician living in the Pacific Northwest. Anne’s 5-year-old son Aiden has stopped speaking, creating a rift for Anne with her husband and his overbearing family. Anne and Frankie’s unexpected friendship develops against the backdrop of life on this remote Pacific Northwest lake and Frankie's elaborate observations of the crows who live around her cottage. Her fascination with crows appeals to Aiden, and the two slowly bond over their shared interest. Garvin weaves in engrossing details about the sophisticated communication of crows and how engaging with the natural world is healing. I loved that each chapter is introduced by a line or two from a birding guide that details the habits and songs of birds and relates to the themes of that particular chapter. Crow Talk is a beautiful story about hope, love, grief, the importance of friendship, and the healing power of nature. 4.5 stars