Book Review: Sadie

What you want him for?
I want to kill him.

Sadie was the book that I wished I would have read sooner. This is the type of book that I look for in a YA Mystery/Thriller. The book follows Sadie, a young adult, on her journey to find her sister’s killer. The book overall was dark and creepy at times, but I LOVED that.

The formatting of the book was very original, and it captivates the reader early on. Sadie is split between two POV’s, Sadie’s and West McCray — the host of a podcast series called The Girls. The podcast is described as “Serial-like” and for anyone who has listened to Serial (season 1 & 2 especially) this definitely felt true. 

West McCray creates the podcast after Sadie and Mattie’s next door neighbor and surrogate grandmother, May Beth, contacts West to help find Sadie after she disappears. The book is almost like a cat and mouse journey with West always being just one step behind Sadie. 

The book really centers around Sadie as the main character with everyone as a secondary character. You are introduced to other characters along Sadie’s journey, but none of them felt too memorable. To be honest a lot of them were shitty people. West McCray was a well written character who you hope is the type of person who always creates a true crime podcast — someone who is emphatic that these are real people who went through a very traumatic event, and wants to honestly help them in anyway he can and not exploit them. You especially saw this with the dialogue between May Beth and West. 

The character of Sadie was brilliantly written. She felt very raw, and very real. It was hard to read her chapters at times because you were always rooting for her and always wanting her to be okay. You were really pulling for her to find closure. Sadie is tough and brave but she’s also vulnerable and lost. You sometimes forget she is a young girl (19) on her own and deliberately putting herself into dangerous situations in order to find out what happened to her sister Mattie. You find out pretty early in the book who is responsible for Mattie’s untimely death, but you stay in the dark about the details until the very end. As the reader, you find out things as Sadie finds them out. 

At first I wasn’t sure how the different POV’s were going to play out, but I think it brought an originality to the story and brought in the popularity of true crime podcasts. It seems like there is a new true crime podcast popping up every day (I’m sure that’s true on some level), and I think Summers used the popularity to her advantage. It worked really well with this story. I also heard the audiobook version of Sadie is done really well, and I would recommend listening to it if you can. I plan on listening to the audiobook at some point in the near future. ALSO, The Girls podcast was also made into a real podcast that you can listen to. Just search for it wherever you listen to podcasts at. 

A few things I didn’t like about the writing style were how Sadie’s memory flashbacks were written. I read the e-book, and maybe it’s different in the physical books but there weren’t any notations or indications of a change of thought.  You would be reading dialogue or some of Sadie’s present thoughts, and the next paragraph would be detailing a memory she was remembering.  It would take me a couple of sentences to realize that that’s what was happening, and so I would have to go back and re-read those parts. Other than that, I had no complaints. Summers writes real and complex characters that feel so life like, it feels like you are reading a piece of non-fiction. 

I gave this book five stars on Goodreads and I wish I could give it more. The book ended in a way where there could be a sequel and man oh man I sure hope there is one. 

 

Have you read this book? I would love to hear what you thought. 

 

 

Until next time!