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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