Novel & Cerita Where The Crawdads Sing

My roommates booked a New Year's Eve light show table—five hundred per person—and started urging me in the group chat to transfer the money. I quietly sent a screenshot of my account balance. "You guys go ahead," I wrote. "I haven't even scraped together my tuition yet." They replied with a string of mocking "haha"s. Our dorm leader, Giselle Murdoch, even posted on her social media with the caption: [The first step to crossing class boundaries is distancing yourself from people who kill the mood.] Just after midnight, they sent me a photo from the light show and said, "Too bad you're not here." I frowned, confused, when my counselor's call cut in—her voice tight with urgency. "Did you invite your roommates to the light show? The organizers said they never even checked in! They're missing!"

Three years ago they got married with love in their hearts and promises on their lips. They were the perfect couple until everything slowly withered away. Aurora would have never imagined that her once loving husband, Adrian, would hand her divorce papers with no reason and walk away without a second thought. Eventually, she had to move on. Three years later, she is wiser, and free. But then Adrian returns, pleading for a chance to make things better, he wants to fix what he broke. Unfortunately, she isn’t the same woman who once waited for him. She was adamant on not letting him draw scars on her stars again, but he was persistent to draw stars by the scars he left. She tells him “the damage is too deep to mend.” He tells her “Don’t tell me it's too deep. Tell me what it'll take to make it right again, because I’d rather die trying to fix us than live without you.”

My stepmother, Mary, hated me to the bone. All because when I was little, I went to a classmate’s house to play and forgot to close the courtyard gate. Her son ran onto the road and was hit to death by a car. My father loved my younger brother the most. After learning what happened, he was heartbroken. “Were you jealous of your brother? That’s why you deliberately left the gate open?” I desperately explained that I had closed the gate, but Dad didn’t believe me. He locked me in the basement and raised me like a dog for the rest of my life. Until one day, when Dad went on a business trip, Mary didn’t give me any food for three days. Starving, I crawled upstairs to the kitchen to look for something to eat. That was when I saw Mary sitting on a man’s lap, saying softly, “If you hadn’t forgotten to close the gate back then, I wouldn’t be living in fear every day of my husband finding out… We’re the ones who killed Ethan.” Only then did I understand that I wasn’t the one who had forgotten to close the gate and caused my brother to run outside, but my stepmother’s lover. Just as I was about to sneak back to the basement, my stepmother noticed me. “What did you hear? No! I can’t let your father find out that I killed our own son!” In a panic, she grabbed me and threw me down the stairs, killing me on the spot. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the very day the car hit my brother. I blinked my innocent, childlike eyes and pointed upstairs, speaking in a soft, baby voice, “Dad, I closed the gate. It was the man in Mom’s bedroom who didn’t!”

While groups like the Shifter Council work openly to promote peace, hatred still exists beneath the surface. Some choose a different path, like Clint Stone, who helps abused and hunted shifters escape and find safety. Marcia has spent most of her life believing she is weak and unimportant. That begins to change when she meets Cain, a quiet wildlife protector who gives her shelter and the chance to heal. When Cain disappears, his brother Marcus arrives with terrible news. Cain is dead, and Marcia must leave with him. On their journey, Marcus reveals the truth about shifters and shows her that she has unknowingly lived among them for over a year. When they reach Marcus’s home, everything Marcia thought she knew about herself changes. She learns she is a Lycan princess long believed dead. As soon as she is named the future Luna, danger follows. After surviving an attempt on her life from within her own pack, Marcia refuses to hide. She works with the women of the pack to challenge old beliefs. As Marcus brings proof of corrupt packs to the Shifter Council, the Lycan King learns of Marcia’s existence and tries to take her. Marcus is badly injured protecting her, and Marcia discovers her first true power. Betrayal soon comes from within the pack. Marcia is kidnapped by someone she trusted and given to a former Beta who believes only the strong deserve to live. When Marcus and the others learn she is missing and pregnant, they gather allies to find her. Marcia escapes on her own and makes her way back home, but the fight is not over. Together, shifters from many packs and backgrounds unite to stop the extremist threat and begin a new chapter with the birth of her son.

ADRIAN'S POV My head was pounding, a dull throb that echoed the frantic beat of my heart. I was hot, too hot, my skin slick with an unfamiliar sweat. I knew it instantly: drugged. One moment I was escorting Aria, basking in the glittering lights and dancing with her in the ballroom at her birthday party. Next, a wine from a waiter, a trip to the bathroom, and then… darkness. I blinked, trying to focus on the blur above me. Damien. My stalker. The man who’d been haunting the edges of my life for weeks, whispering cryptic claims of a shared past I couldn’t recall. He was on top of me, pinning me to the plush velvet of some unfamiliar bed. His eyes, usually so intense and unsettling, were filled with a disturbing mix of guilt and desperation. "I’m sorry, Adrian, I'm so sorry I had to do this, but I can't stand seeing you with her. Watching you rewrite our history... please, remember me. Remember us." He leaned down, his breath hot against my ear. "I promise, I'll cherish you this time." Then, his lips crashed onto mine, a fierce, possessive kiss that stole my breath away. His hands moved over me, desperate and knowing, igniting a fire that both terrified and strangely thrilled me. Maybe it was the drug blurring the lines of reason. Or maybe… just maybe, deep down, my body recognized something my mind couldn’t. It responded to his touch with a shameful eagerness, a desperate need that mirrored his own. All I could do was surrender to the moment, to the heat, to the undeniable connection I felt with this man, Damien, as I returned his kiss with a fervor that shocked us both.

Rejection has never been so hurting especially if it's coming from one's own family. Switched at birth, Sophia only knew her true identity at 15 but that true identity has only brought her a complicated life. Pregnant out of wedlock, her fiance left her to get married to her sister. Lost her baby and got disowned. Sophia has only learnt the hard way of life that she now considered it, the normal way. But she chose her path, to be strong and live for herself and five years later, she returned to the city, saved a little boy and that encounter brought about something different from what Sophia has always known and believed...

Amanda Smith, who decided to go home early after her contract couldn't be renewed due to the school's financial problem. On getting home, only for her to meet her fiance and her best friend having an intimate section together. She moved out of the apartment she shared with her friend. Eric Adam, a tech billionaire, also a single dad, needs a teacher and a mentor for his son who was on probation in school. What will happen when Amanda teaches and mentors the son and falls in love with him? Will Eric return her feelings or ignore them due to his last relationship with his ex-wife?

Can you ever understand the feeling of having sex with your husband as he keeps calling out another woman's name? Yes, that was my life as the wife of the ruthless, stoic CEO. With my sister, his childhood sweetheart on the run with her boyfriend and his need for a Mrs Levine and an heir, I was picked in the stead of my sister to temporarily fill up the space. “ You're not pregnant yet?!” He banged his hand against the bedside table in anger. “; I guess we just have to keep trying then,” he smirked. I was always afraid of that statement, he indirectly meant sleeping with me every single day but no one dared to say otherwise even if I would fall sick after. What's weird about the heart is how it falls in love with the weirdest persons. I loved Asphalt even though he didn't love me and I believed I could make him love me but that dream came crashing down when Janet returned. As I pushed my babies into the world, I wondered if  Asphalt would love me once he sees our kids but with his plans of taking my kids and reuniting with my sister, I wasn't going to wait until I was kicked out. Taking my babies in my arms, I ran away from the hospital as the rain went pit-pat concealing the tears and I for the first time resented Asphalt.

At my formal betrothal announcement ceremony, Carmelo Conti, the old Don of the Conti Famiglia places the ring that symbolizes the authority as a Don before me and tells me to choose my groom. Whoever I choose shall become the heir. I don't hesitate to pass the ring to Aldo Conti, Simone Conti's uncle. The atmosphere in the hall goes eerily silent. Everyone knows that Simone and I are childhood friends. I've taken a bullet from a rival aimed at Simone before. Till now, I still have the scar to prove it. Meanwhile, Aldo is Carmelo's youngest brother. He's also known as the most cold-blooded and blood-thirsty assassin in the family. No one dares to provoke him at all. What everyone doesn't know is that I've made a completely different choice in my previous lifetime. At that time, I had chosen Simone. On the same night after we held our wedding at the cathedral, Simone and my stepsister, Clodia Moretti, slept together. All the elders in both families were enraged, to say the least. They had Clodia flown to Novarria, and she was never to return ever again. Simone pinned the blame on my possessiveness. Since then, he traveled everywhere with young women who looked like Clodia. He often flirted with them right in front of me, too. Later on, I was hunted down by the assassins. Before I died, I managed to dial Simone's number so that I could call for help. All I heard were his low panting and Clodia's loud moans. Just like that, I breathed my last with immense hatred in my eyes. Now, I've gotten reborn. In this lifetime, I shall grant Simone's wish by letting him be with Clodia. But he has the nerve to regret everything he's done to me.

Freya was drunk, heartbroken, and falling apart after discovering she was adopted and that the only family she had ever known was using her. He was warm and solid and she let herself disappear into one night with him. By dawn she was gone with a new name, new life, and no looking back. Then seven years later, she walks into an Alpha's estate pretending to be someone else, desperate for prize money to pay off the debt she took on searching for the baby stolen from her. Across the ballroom floor stood the stranger from that night, who they now called Alpha. He just does not know she is that woman who disappeared before morning seven years ago. And Freya also has no memory of his face at all. Freya is thinking one thing: why does the Alpha’s daughter bear a similar birthmark to her stolen child? But she holds her thought when a mate contract is slammed in front of her.