Book Review :: Sadie, by Courtney Summers

Sadie by Courtney Summers
ISBN: 1250267137
Published by Wednesday Books
on 25 October 2020
Genres: Mystery, Young Adult
Pages: 308
Goodreads

When popular radio personality West McCray receives a desperate phone call from a stranger imploring him to find nineteen-year-old runaway Sadie Hunter, he's not convinced there's a story there; girls go missing all the time. But when it's revealed that Sadie fled home after the brutal murder of her little sister, Mattie, West travels to the small town of Cold Creek, Colorado, to uncover what happened.

Sadie has no idea that her journey to avenge her sister will soon become the subject of a blockbuster podcast. Armed with a switchblade, Sadie follows meager clues hoping they'll lead to the man who took Mattie's life, because she's determined to make him pay with his own. But as West traces her path to the darkest, most dangerous corners of big cities and small towns, a deeply unsettling mystery begins to unfold--one that's bigger than them both. Can he find Sadie before it's too late?

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What is Sadie by Courtney Summers about?

Sadie’s life has been far from easy, having grown up in an isolated small town where she had to raise her younger sister, Mattie, on her own. Despite her efforts to provide a normal life for her sister and keep their heads above water, tragedy strikes when Mattie is found dead. With the police investigation is clearly not going anywhere, Sadie sets out to the searching and investigate herself, without only a few leads to go on, but with a mission to bring her sister’s killer justice.

“People don’t change. They just get better at hiding who they really are.”

Alongside the story of Sadie trying to figure out what happened to Mattie, West McCray, a radio personality working on a segment about overlooked American towns, stumbles upon Sadie’s story. Intrigued by her tale, he becomes obsessed with finding the missing girl and starts his own podcast, tracking her journey in hopes of unravelling the mystery and locating her before it’s too late.

My thoughts on Sadie

I wish I loved Sadie by Courtney Summers. I really do. But I just didn’t.

Don’t get me wrong, it was a good book, and it’s really clever in its execution. But it didn’t click with me the way some other stories do. I didn’t feel drawn to Sadie, despite her horrific story (or perhaps because of it?), and even though I was rooting for her, she didn’t captivate me or pull me in in the way she perhaps should have.

But let’s back up a little bit.

“Every little thing about you can be a weapon, if you’re clever enough.”

I read Sadie by Courtney Summers via audiobook, which was both a good call and a ball call. It’s told from two perspectives: the first is Sadie’s, and the second is a podcaster, West McCray. This is where the audiobook comes in trumps, as the interviews that West carries out in his investigation of Sadie (and her sister’s murder), are voiced by different people, making the audiobook experience more realistic.

However, I do also think the audiobook was potentially my downfall, other than that. This seems to me to be a book I should have read in paperback format or ebook at least. And I can’t really tell you why. Perhaps it was the heaviness of the book that I managed to brush over when listening at work, or perhaps it was jumping between timelines (present with West doing his interviews and figuring out what happened, and the past, where Sadie is trying to find out what happened to Mattie). I tend to not love time jumps, but if I do read them then I prefer it to be in physical format as if I miss ‘2 years earlier’ or something to that effect in the audiobook, you’ve really lost me.

But formatting aside …

“I wish his darkness lived outside of him, because you have to know it’s there to see it. Like all real monsters, he hides in plain sight.”

The story was harsh and cruel, and yet somehow you can see why Sadie went all must-catch-the-murderer on the world. She loved Mattie more than anything and she wanted to see justice come to the person who killed her. As we follow both Sadie and West, as they live out and figure out the story, we learn more about Mattie and Sadie and their relationship and while it was tainted and stained with the horrors of their childhood, you really GOT why Sadie would stop at nothing to get revenge.

The story was hard to read (listen to), as it was full of terrible acts from people who should know and be better, but at the same time, I just didn’t connect with Sadie. She didn’t have much of a personality other than ‘Mattie’s sister, out for blood’.

Also, the end (and this isn’t a spoiler? Not too much of one), doesn’t really end. It’s very open-ended and while that’s okay sometimes … I just wanna know. I wanna know what happened to Sadie … West is going into this story a year after Mattie’s death and following Sadie’s steps so many months on … what happened?!?

Anyway.

This was a good and meh book for me, which is rough to rate and hence why I’ve settled on an uninspiring 3-stars. It’s the ending that really screwed the book over for me I think.

While this book wasn’t a winner for me, I’d still be up for reading more from Courtney Summers, as I think she does write really well, and the story itself wasn’t bad. If you’re into thrillers or mysteries, then pick up Sadie if you haven’t already.

Have you read Sadie? What did you think? 

Content Warnings of paedophilia, sexual abuse, drug abuse, and murder.