[Book Review Redo] Sadie by Courtney Summers

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.

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CW: pedophilia, drug abuse, sexual assault, parental neglect, violence, child pornography

This is a re-read for me! I gifted a copy of Sadie to my friend Erica and when I learned she was reading it in January I absolutely was up for a buddy read! I last read Sadie a couple months before the release, which was in summer 2018, so it's been a while so I was excited for a refresher, even if I knew it would break my heart. 

"When she laughed, it would go so shrill and hurt my ears but I'm not complaining because when Mattie laughed, it was like being on a plane at night, looking down on some city you've never been to and it's all lit up." 

From the very beginning and throughout the entire story it's easy to sympathize with Sadie. Even before you get all the information about what she's been through and how she grew up, you learn that her sister Mattie has been murdered, and that Mattie was Sadie's entire world. Sadie grew up quickly because she was forced to take the place as Mattie's mom & protector because their mom was an addict and often not reliable. When it's present time in Sadie's POV, she is nineteen years old and you can tell even early on that this girl has the weight of the entire world on her shoulders. Even before everything really starts in this book she already sounds exhausted and it's honestly incredibly hard to read at times.

 Besides her mom, Claire, Sadie had a grandmother-like figure, May Beth. May Beth was a friend of Claire's mom and May Beth promised to look after the girls when she passed. I think because May Beth being a little bit of an outsider at times, even if it's evident she loved Sadie and Mattie (and even Claire, despite their arguments) so much, it forced her to have to take a step back. I think she regrets that and wishes she allowed Sadie to be a kid more often, and that really hurts my heart. I really loved May Beth as a character. 

The other big character in this book is West McCray, a journalist from NYC who is trying to find Sadie. The police have put a hold on their investigation because they ran our of leads and resources to find a nineteen year old girl who in their eyes, probably ran away after the death of her sister becoming too much for her. Honestly, for a journalist who lives in NYC (which is an expensive place to live) he does a lot of travel and puts so much time into finding Sadie. He gets so invested, and his passion and emotion for this case makes you really root for him finding answers and hopefully finding Sadie. There is one part while he's interviewing a character named Ellis where he reacts to new information and his reaction absolutely broke me. He never met Mattie and Sadie is missing, he doesn't know if he'd ever meet them, but it's obvious he wants to find her and he really cares about these girls and even Claire and May Beth. 

"But love is complicated, it's messy. It can inspire selflessness, selfishness, our great accomplishments and our hardest mistakes. It brings us together and it can just as easily drive us apart." 

The plot is hard to read but there are no details of any of the triggers I mention above. It's all off screen, but the author makes it clear exactly what is happening to the girls and victims of the traumatic events I list. Even so, Courtney Summers is a fantastic author and her words are filled with a lot of emotion and heartache, so I would advice to either skip this one or read carefully if any of the content warnings above are triggering to you. Even with the content warnings aside, this book is filled with a lot of dread and depressing imagery. I think there are bittersweet moments nestled in moments of the story but they're not often.  

"What's that saying: better to ask forgiveness than permission? But I've never been good at saying sorry either." 

However, one way that absolutely made it easier to read is the audiobook, or even the podcast The Girls that takes all of West McCray's chapters, which are formatted like podcast scripts. I would warn you that the podcast The Girls is missing a chapter or two, I am unsure why but it stops before the story does, where the audiobook has all of the chapters. I do think the audiobook is the way to go if you're thinking of reading it. It's a full cast and so well produced. It brings the story to life in a way that only the best audiobooks can pull off. My only gripe about anything, book or audiobook related, is that some of the actors in the audiobook sound like they're reading straight off a script and it takes you out of the story. The good news is the few times that happened those characters were very small and they disappeared as quickly as they appeared. 

Overall, I highly recommend this book. Like I said, it is a hard one to read so please be careful my friends. But other than that I think it's such a good one for anyone who likes murder mysteries, true crime (books and/or podcasts), or stories about revenge. I really need to look up the author's other books because I absolutely love her writing style.

 "We have more story than time to tell it - but I suppose that's true for all of us."

 Thanks for reading!