Rating: ★★★★★
Blurb: A missing girl on a journey of revenge. A Serial―like podcast following the clues she's left behind. And an ending you won't be able to stop talking about. 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 meager 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. Courtney Summers has written the breakout book of her career. Sadie is propulsive and harrowing and will keep you riveted until the last page. Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34810320-sadie While I may have picked up this book from a major 50% off sale, I would pay full price ten times over just to reread the thrilling wonder that is Sadie. I am one of the biggest true crime people you will ever meet, so to hear this book be compared to Serial, I knew this would be the love of my life and I was right! This was the first and one five star book I’ve read so far in the year and I’m not surprised considering it is so captivating to read. There really weren’t complaints to the book as far as I’m concerned (though the ending is a little infuriating depending on who you ask.) It was unique to read since Sadie’s perspective was written in a normal novel form, while the podcast following Sadie’s disappearance is written entirely in script form. The script form for half of the book made it a super-fast read and was how I was able to devour the whole thing in about two days. Sadie is a very unpredictable character since her actions mirror someone with a Kill Bill level of vendetta and Bear Grylls level survival instinct hidden within her, which made the book inherently surprising. I never could predict her next move and even if I got a glimpse as to what it might be, the scene would cut away and change perspective right before I could find out. Summers did an amazing job of keeping the readers in the dark for a lot of the book until she wanted them to know something. A scene would be written vaguely not because she lacked a descriptive vocabulary, but because the details of the scene would only be fully divulged later on. The book is not only a mystery but a tragedy and a thriller. My emotions would be dragged from one way to the next as the podcast chapters unveiled her backstory and more fully made you question whether Sadie is a reliable narrator or not. As you follow her path that gets darker and more tiring over time, the risks she takes lead to scenes grabbing at my heart and holding my breath as if I were watching the whole thing unfold rather than reading about it. While many rocks are left unturned, that aspect of the book didn’t bother me since it felt closer to how a real true-crime podcast would play out. So if you’ve just finished Serial or Crime Junkies and need another hit of a true-crime podcast, don’t go looking through podcast charts, instead, try and find Sadie on your local shelf. (Also, though I personally didn’t read it as an audio book, my friend did and said the quality was that of a real podcast for that perspective and that the narrator really is able to peg Sadie’s voice perfectly!)
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Rating: ★★★★
Blurb: Three friends, two love stories, one convention: this fun, feminist love letter to geek culture is all about fandom, friendship, and finding the courage to be yourself. Charlie likes to stand out. She’s a vlogger and actress promoting her first movie at SupaCon, and this is her chance to show fans she’s over her public breakup with co-star Reese Ryan. When internet-famous cool-girl actress Alyssa Huntington arrives as a surprise guest, it seems Charlie’s long-time crush on her isn’t as one-sided as she thought. Taylor likes to blend in. Her brain is wired differently, making her fear change. And there’s one thing in her life she knows will never change: her friendship with her best guy friend Jamie—no matter how much she may secretly want it to. But when she hears about a fan contest for her favorite fandom, she starts to rethink her rules on playing it safe. Queens of Geek by Jen Wilde, chosen by readers like you for Macmillan's young adult imprint Swoon Reads, is an empowering novel for anyone who has ever felt that fandom is family. Goodreads At one of my first times in a library earlier this year, I had checked my Goodreads to try and find more books like Ship It and books within that ‘fandom’ realm. While it was fairly hard to find something that was more fan-ish than romantic, I discovered the intoxicatingly pink cover of Queen of Geeks and after reading the summary, instantly got good vibes. (And you’re probably like, but Cole, it ‘two love stories’ right on the cover!!! But listen, there definitely are two romances going on, but that’s not the only plots going on, there’s absolutely a lot of man vs. self and man vs. society that goes on.) The only main thing that might irk people is that some of the dialogue was pretty cheesy or stiff at times, but it still maintained to be fluffy and cute. In the same vein, some sections of the writing felt simple or choppy, but quite honestly I got so lost in the story that it didn’t end of mattering all that much later on. There was, however, just so much that this book got utterly right. Firstly, the lead character. Yes. Charlie was hands down more than I could ask for. From being so casual about her sexuality to speaking up against the double standards she faces as a female actress, it was unlike something I’d seen in similar books where usually a character’s sexuality that dithers from straight always has to be a big deal or how little I see of sexism discussed in scenarios outside the character’s school. Charlie is both the celebrity and the fan, leaving readers more readily able to relate to her as a teenager than if she were just some thirty-something celebrity (as was the case in Ship It.) Charlie being a Bi POC and the lead definitely also added something to be desired when reading. Alongside her diversity, Taylor, her best friend, is autistic and has anxiety. While she was a mix between a side and a lead character, having this realistic mix of diversity in a book makes it more appealing to people that are sick of the binary. Taylor and Jaime are written very much like two characters that are inherently a dynamic duo, they get perfectly in and out of sync with one another that their scenes are noticeably more tied together than Charlie’s POV. One little thing I really loved was that since a majority of the fandoms within the book were fake or were classic references, the book never really seemed aged to a 2019 reader like myself, unlike What If It’s Us where the Hamilton references really make it less ‘relatable’ or ‘in’ since the references date the longer the book’s out. The diversity alone should be a draw for readers and since a majority of us our fans, the book only fuels the fire internally the entire time the gang goes to their first convention and geeks out. To sum it up, I finished this book in just a little over one sitting. It was quick, fun, and about the perfect pallet cleanser, I’d recommend to anyone looking for something to read between heavy, physically or emotional, books. |
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