Sadie, Courtney Summers
Sadie hasn’t had an easy life. Growing up on her own, she’s been raising her sister Mattie in an isolated small town, trying her best to provide a normal life and keep their heads above water.
But when Mattie is found dead, Sadie’s entire world crumbles. After a somewhat botched police investigation, Sadie is determined to bring her sister’s killer to justice and hits the road following a few meagre clues to find him.
When West McCray—a radio personality working on a segment about small, forgotten towns in America—overhears Sadie’s story at a local gas station, he becomes obsessed with finding the missing girl. He starts his own podcast as he tracks Sadie’s journey, trying to figure out what happened, hoping to find her before it’s too late.
Whenever I look at a Courtney Summers book I think why haven’t I read all of her books yet? Then I remember how All the Rage basically gutted me and how I haven’t been ready to go through that again. And now comes Sadie. Sadie is the kind of girl that goes missing all the time sadly. Not enough of us care when it happens. Sadie disappears after her younger sister’s violent murder, and a podcast host is convinced by their surrogate grandmother to try to find her. I struggle with reading books about dead girls because sometimes the real world is sad enough and because I don’t want to think about a world that might hurt my own girls. Or my sister! But this was well worth my reading fears because Sadie is fierce and brave and I loved her. I started slowly but once I got into Sadie’s hunt for her sister’s killer I could not put this book down.
Summers makes you feel Sadie’s pain and her anger. You also worry for her and I physically cringed away from my kindle while reading at the truths I feared would come out. I thought the change from podcast narration to Sadie’s point of view was a really cool way to tell the story and unravel her mystery. I love that Macmillan actually put out a podcast – The Girls – to accompany the book. I am terrible at podcasts but I am going to have to listen to this even knowing how it ends. The ending wasn’t what I wanted it to be- but it was a perfect ending. I almost wish I had started listening first. I’m afraid to say too much and give something away so I’ll just say I loved Sadie and you should read it.
I’ll just be collecting the rest of Courtney Summers’ books to read when I’m feeling brave. Any recommendations on what to try first?
#FindSadie
Thank you NetGalley and Wednesday Books for this advance copy in exchange for an honest opinion!
Gun In Act One 
Agggghhhhh I’ve been hearing about Courtney Summers for so long and I haven’t been able to gear myself up to read any of her books. They sound brutal. I gave up reading about dead girls a few years ago, but I could make a loophole for books that are interrogating the idea of stories of dead girls.
I applaud you for the giving up dead girls books, I have sworn off a lot of books like that too for my own mental health. In this case I think it helps that we don’t know her as a living girl as awful as that sounds. And I went in knowing it would be hard but worth it. When you’re feeling up for it Summers is worth it!
This sounds so interesting! I like true crime podcasts, so the idea of having one as part of a book and seeing sort of the investigation side of a story along with all of the other stuff in this book… I am intrigued!
Oh it is so so excellent! I hope you check it out!
I just saw this one somewhere earlier today, but did not read the review then. And it does sound interesting