Review: Sadie

Review: Sadie

Title: Sadie

Author: Courtney Summers

Published: 4 September 2018

Format: Audiobook (Overdrive)

Rating: 5/5

Pages/Hours: 311/7.5 hours

Memorable Quote: ““But love is complicated, it’s messy. It can inspire selflessness, selfishness, our greatest accomplishments and our hardest mistakes. It brings us together and it can just as easily drive us apart.”

You Might Enjoy: We Were Liars (E. Lockhart), Second Star (Alyssa B. Sheinmel)

Synopsis: When their mother left, Sadie had to raise her younger sister, Mattie, who she loved and adored. Life was never easy, living in an economically depressed town in Colorado, but Sadie does everything she can for Mattie. But then Mattie’s body is found and Sadie is destroyed by this sudden death. When the police investigation goes nowhere, Sadie takes it into her own hands to hunt down Mattie’s killer – even though she only has a handful of clues.

Sadie leaves in a car bought from Craigslist, and that same car is found back in Cold Creek some time later – but without Sadie to be found.

Now she’s a missing girl – like her sister.

West McCray is a radio personality who is recruited into following Sadie’s story. He starts his own podcasts and tracks down the different people who have interacted with Sadie to see if they might know about where she ended up, but can he find her before it’s too late?

Or is Sadie destined to end up like Mattie?

Review:

*Note this book contains topics of sexual abuse, drugs, pedophilia, and murder*

This book is dark. There’s no way around that.

Wow. Sadie was hard to read, but it wasn’t written to be an easy book. I don’t normally listen to books on audio, but I have a Christmas project I’m working on so I figured I’d give an audiobook a try- especially since Sadie has a podcast element.

Listening to this book was fantastic because of this podcast element and the fact that it has a full cast. The end result is raw, gripping, and heart-wrenching. The story, especially the podcast, was a reminder that these podcasts and documentaries of killers and missing people that we are so obsessed with are based on real people. It’s so easy to get caught up in the questions and theories that we forget these missing people are just that – real people.

I haven’t cried so much over a book in a long time. Sadie absolutely destroyed me. Despite it being a fictional story, her desire for revenge and justice for her sister was achingly real. I felt every ounce of hurt and anger in my heart.

The love Sadie and Mattie had for each other was true sisterly love. The pain I felt reading Sadie’s story could only be a fraction of the pain she felt upon losing her sister and while searching for the monster that destroyed their world.

The road trip trope takes a much darker, more heartfelt turn in Sadie as she meets a variety of people who add more complex layers to the story, especially once West meets them for his podcast.

Sadie’s chapters are full of passion, determination, depression, and anger. My heart raced while listening to them and I worried for her and silently cheered her on. West was very much a person on the radio. He sounded like he kept himself professionally emotionally detached from Sadie. He was there to state facts, follow her story, and hopefully find her. I found myself willing West to move faster, care more, become more involved, but I’m glad Summers kept him at an arm’s length. It felt much more realistic.

Realistic isn’t beautiful, and nothing about Sadie really was beautiful – aside from the bond between Sadie and Mattie. This is the kind of story that’s meant to keep you up, thinking about every little part of it.

I definitely recommend Sadie, but prepare yourself before you read it. There is nothing light or easy about this book. From the first page it starts the grueling process of exhausting you mentally and emotionally until you feel a horrible physical ache in your heart and stomach.

Have you read Sadie?

What did you think? Let me know!

-Syl

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