Read 11/25/19 – 11/27/19
I found Sadie, by Courtney Summers to be a solidly enjoyable story. Unfortunately, I didn’t connect to it on the same level that many people did. This follows the story of a young woman by the name of Sadie who is hunting down the man she believes killed her little sister. Her intent is to get revenge and kill him. The story is told in the form of a podcast. As an audiobook, it works really well, but it didn’t save it entirely. That said, it wasn’t entirely a podcast.
We are following along a true crime podcast called Girls which is following this story of Sadie who has gone missing as she is in search of this man. As the podcaster begins to uncover new information, we the reader get to follow Sadie in each of these situations. This format makes for a solid book, and I think most people would enjoy it if they read it. However, the story never really worked for me.
The concepts being addressed are dark, hard hitting topics, so they have great potential. The problem is, I never really connected with Sadie. Sure, she’s unlikable which is the point, so I suppose the problem is that she just wasn’t that interesting. I don’t know what the author should have done to make it more effective. There is definitely a lot of potential here. In fact, the most emotional parts of the book were less to do with the characters and more to do with how these situations have effected me and people I love in the real world. Of course, that just isn’t enough.
I wish I felt the same passion for this book as so many other people did; I just don’t. I can’t help but think of Girls Burn Brighter which is a similar story of abuse that is also hard hitting, and in it I found it easy to sympathize and with the main characters. I don’t have any concrete reason why. Maybe it was the format. It is a slow revelation of information, and maybe it would have worked better if Summers focused more on Sadie’s tragedy sooner. It starts on her chase with her missing. All we see is her with her game face but not how she got there, and by the time we get context, I guess it was too late for me to connect.
I honestly don’t know what the right answer is here. This is just my heartfelt attempt to ask myself why I didn’t connect. I assure you, I really wanted to and thought I would. I didn’t, and that’s disappointing. It just wasn’t the best book for me. 3.5/5 stars, rounding up.
For the Love of Science 
2 thoughts on “Sadie by Courtney Summers ★★★★☆”