Review for "Sadie" by Courtney Summers (2018) Rating: 4 out 5 stars
This book had a lot of hype surrounding it, so I listened to all of it and read it. Ultimately, I think it’s a good novel but the heaps of glowing praise is a bit premature.
Sadie is a teenager growing up in rural Colorado who has not had an easy life. She raises her younger sister Mattie through a modest job due to her mother being mostly absent and a drug addict. When Mattie turns up dead, Sadie hits the road to bring her sister’s killer to justice. Heartbroken, Sadie and Mattie’s surrogate grandmother and neighbor brings the girls’ story to a popular radio personality, West McCray, who creates his own podcast (entitled “The Girls”) to attempt to uncover the truth.
Don’t get me wrong, the writing here is quite nice. I also loved how the story was told through podcasts (I’m a self-confessed podcast junkie) and Sadie’s POV in alternate chapters. But even with this, it took a long time for me to get into this book. When it did get going for me after about the first 150 pages or so, I still couldn’t quite “get” into Sadie’s POV. The podcast sections definitely held more interest for me, but even after a while I found myself fighting sleep. Perhaps it’s because what was just relayed via Sadie’s POV is retold through the podcast chapters, just from a different perspective. And while I liked the idea of this one, I just didn’t love it.
There’s also mad trigger warnings for things like pedophilia, rape, and murder. I wasn’t expecting all of that, but it’s definitely a major theme in this book.
Definitely more than 3 stars, so I’ll go for 4 here. This book was just not my cup of proverbial cup of tea.
29chapters.com 