TOP REC

Raw and brilliantly executed, Sadie stuns from the very first page and does so until the very final sentence. Employing a podcast-style narrative—an innovative and fresh technique to storytelling— and a first-person viewpoint in a cyclical fashion allowed the reader to have no choice but to be as removed from the situation as they were enmeshed within it. In a story with very sensitive subjects and antiheroes, Summers perfectly and gently portrays every element with skill and heart to effectively drive the plot home in the most gut-wrenching manner possible.

Sadie is a vividly stark young woman with far too much on her shoulders, and though she has her own afflictions and struggles, her drive to discover who killed her sister was paramount to anything. Her edges were blunt and dirty, but the sharpness to her ability and wit was unspeakable. She’s not the normal literary heroine, and she couldn’t have been—readers needed to find her as this vigilante character that straddled the line of likeable, but was still unfathomably relatable. Summers did an outstanding job at capturing her strength and vulnerabilities, and blurring that line between normal and the perverse, both as an individual and those of the personalities around her. The podcast, working in tandem to deepen and further the mystery of the story, allowed for necessary breaks from the heaviness of Sadie’s POV, and provided eyes outside of her perspective—adding a depth and complexity that was simply breathtaking.

At one point I had to step away for a few days, not because it wasn’t fascinating and well-written, but because of how much hurt I was feeling being inside this character and her story. The power of Sadie’s journey is beyond words and I loved it because of its honest portrayal of the brutality of humanity and the softness to it that can still be found at its heart. I’m glad it skirted and pushed past the boundaries of YA as so much would’ve been missed had it been censored to maintain an age level.

Sadie is a devastatingly powerful novel depicting a very real and harrowing subject. I can’t even begin finding words, and yet the words I have found feel inferior. I applaud Summers for tackling this topic with an understated beauty and verve, and for crafting a story that will stick with you long after it’s over. I’m left gasping for words, and yet I cannot recommend this story highly enough.

This title is a nominee for the 2019 YALSA Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers selected list. Full review available at: http://www.yalsa.ala.org/thehub/2018/08/28/qp2019-nominees-round-september-4-edition/

This is a thriller/investigative journalism/ road trip/family tale/ revenge?/ a million other things story. There was a lot going on, and I don't think there is anyone way to describe what I just read.
This is such a modern way of telling a story. The book is written alternating between Sadie's story and a podcast that is trying to figure out what happened to her. In my opinion the podcast was a brilliant was of slowly telling the story to the reader. You get the opportunity to see life through Sadie's eyes, so you see all of the motivations for her actions, but through the podcaster, you also see the people you left behind.
I didn't find anything about this story to be particularly surprising. I didn't find the characters to be particularly sympathetic. They were all extremely flawed and (This makes me feel like I'm getting old) I felt like Sadie was taking a lot of unnecessary, irresponsible risks. That being said, I had no trouble finishing this book. It was an enjoyable quick read. I didn't find myself bored or find my mind wandering from the tale. It is perfect for any day you are looking for a dark YA mystery/thriller.

DEAD. Sadie by Courtney Summers was a very fast-paced book that had me completely absorbed up until the very end.

What it’s about: Sadie and Mattie’s mom is an addict. So Sadie who is 6 years older than Mattie, raises her the best she can while her mother is under the influence of drugs or alcohol, most of the time both. However, when Mattie gets murdered, Sadie goes on a hunt for the person that did it and ends up driving all over Colorado following small clues. Radio personality West McCray gets involved when his radio station decides to start a serialized podcast titled The Girls where West goes on a hunt to find Sadie… before something happens to her too.

The book jumps between the podcast and Sadie’s point of view from right before she leaves the trailer park. I loved this style and haven’t read a book like it before. I also love that the podcast is actually a real thing that you can listen to. As of when I wrote this, there are 4 of 8 available to listen to.

Summer’s writing kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time and I loved that. I had full body tingles while I was reading which doesn’t happen often. The pacing was fantastic, and I loved Sadie’s POV. The only thing I didn’t love was the ending. Up until the end it was a 5 star read, but unfortunately it just wasn’t an ending I could give a 5 to.

Final thought: Most people are going to love this book, and even though it’s YA you don’t really feel like it while you are reading it. I blew through it, and highly recommend to anyone who is a fan of a good mystery even if you don’t usually read young adult. I just hope if Summers writes another book that it has a better ending that I can be ok with.

It's been 2 days since I finished this incredible novel and I'm still not sure what I want to say. I have 2 pages of notes (1 full page is purely quotes) that I'm hoping to sort out into something reasonable over the holiday weekend.

This is NOT the book I was expecting, but it did blow me away. There was one "reveal" that simply broke me. I was sneak reading at work and when I reached that pivotal scene, I literally felt sick to my stomach. I was fighting back tears, shaking my head, and feeling every ounce of that shock and guilt. And the thing that blows my mind is that the act in itself wasn't that shocking. What truly got me was the way it was revealed. If you've read it, you know what I'm talking about, and if you haven't, DO SO, and then let me know if it affects you too!

Summers writing is raw, honest, vulnerable, gritty, and unbelievably worthy of your time. If you can read this when it drops next week and give Sadie the much-needed love she deserves.

Full RTC.

TW: sexual abuse, pedophilia, child abuse, rape, consent issues, murder, and more.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing an e-arc in exchange for my honest review!

Sadie and Mattie are sisters. From the day Sadie sees her newborn sister she cares about her deeply and wants to protect her from the harsh circumstances in their life, like her addicted mother and her ever-changing boyfriends. Sadie’s life centers around caring for Mattie, so when Mattie is found dead a few miles outside their village, Sadie’s world breaks apart and there is only one thing for her to do - find the man who killed her sister.

First of all let me say that this book would make an excellent audiobook and I would for sure listen to it again in that format. Fans of Courtney Summer’s writing as well as people who enjoy True Crime Podcasts will not be disappointed with Sadie. This book alternates between Sadie’s POV and a podcast script called The Girls. While the format was well executed the various flawed, selfish, but utterly honest characters made the book worth reading for me.
I had a few issues with the overall pacing of the story and sometimes felt like the podcast just repeated stuff we already knew and left out certain information only to enhance the suspense.

I was very pleased with the way that diversity was incorporated in this story and also how the topic of Sadie’s stutter was dealt with.

I recommend this book to everyone who’s intrigued by the synopsis because I very much believe that everyone will gain something different from the journey Sadie goes on and more people should hear about it.

There are Trigger warnings for Child abuse, pedophilia, drug abuse and violence.

Filled with twisty turns and events you don't see coming, Sadie is probably one of the best mysteries I've read by Summers, not just this year, but ever and has definitely made my top ten reads this year.

Filled with so much love and hate and the need to make things right, Sadie will have you eagerly turning the pages gobbling up ever delicious turn of events and reveals so fast that they will leave your head spinning and wishing that you would have savored it just a bit more by the time to come to the heartbreaking last page.

Truly a stand out mystery not only about two sisters and their need to survive, but about family love that comes in all shapes, sizes and circumstances. A book that will leave you breathless and somewhat heartbroken by the end in all the very best ways that Summer knows how to.

A must read for everyone.

This was incredible and chilling. It's narrated in first person by Sadie with a podcast interspersed in there. The podcast is a real podcast you can listen to, and I recommend going and listening to it.
This is a really intense and well crafted book that definitely gets hard to read because of the subject matter. Highly recommend.

Sadie by Courtney Summer's a new to me author. A roller-coaster of a storyline. I was glad I got the chance to read this book. It was good but not a top rater for me. It could have been how it went and forth with the chapters and the conversations on a podcast or maybe my mood. I look forward to checking out more the the author to see how her other books are.

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!

This is probably the first book I have read that I think would have been better as an audiobook. I think that the podcast component lent itself to an audio format, not that I didn’t enjoy reading it, I think I would have liked it better as an audiobook.

The story is great, though I do feel like it is a little overhyped. I liked it a lot, but I didn’t love it. I’ve seen people gushing about this book, and for me, this was not a book to gush over. The book felt very real and it is very reminiscent of the popular podcast S-Town, at least to me.

The characters were well written, and I really did care what happened to them. The format of the book really helped to lend itself to the mystery and this book really does lead you on quite the wild ride.

Courtney Summers' Sadie is a young adult thriller that takes readers on a rollercoaster ride of emotions as we follow the story of Sadie Hunter, a 19-year old young woman whose 13-year old sister Mattie Southern is found dead which leads her to track down the person she believes was responsible. The story is told in a variety of ways, but the most interesting is by radio personality West McCray's, who is urged to research and tell Sadie's story by his boss. The story becomes podcasts called "The Girls."

West picks up on the trail of Sadie thanks to a woman named Mary Beth Foster who was more of a mother to Sadie and her sister Mattie than their own drug addled mother who flew the coup and never thought about what would happen she she left. The question we all need to know is what really happened to Sadie? Sadie's journey is hard to take. No, it's absolutely brutal. Here is a someone whose sister was her entire world. Her mother didn't want her, but Mattie was her pride and joy. Mattie was pretty much hers to take care of when their mother left, and she did exactly that to the point of giving up her own future for her younger sister.

But it wasn't good enough. After Mattie is found dead, Sadie's world shatters to the point where she withdraws from society and goes on a Kill Bill type mission after the man she believes killed her sister. Readers will feel the agony and the determination coming from Sadie's voice. Sadie is as real as it gets. She's in a dark place, and every step she takes, takes her to an even darker place where it's hard to come back from. Sadie knows that there is a good chance she will lose herself forever, and not be able to return to the person she was before Mattie's death.

"I’m going to kill a man. I’m going to steal the light from his eyes. I want to watch it go out."


Thanks not only to West McCray, but Mary Beth as well, readers will follow Sadie's story step by step as she trails after the supposed killer. It's hard at times not to want to hold Sadie. Especially when she has such a hard time expressing herself without her persistent stutter which everyone has teased her about for years. For me, I was praying. Yes, I pray. I don't have to belong to an organized church in order to pray. McCray puts together bits and pieces of Sadie’s story through various sources. After nearly giving up, West realizes that he must find Sadie before it’s too late.

"If she dies, she will take the truth with her."


After reading this story, you will come away with a whole lot of feelings: Heart breaking, shocking, disturbed, angry, sad, and appalled that we still live in a world where girls go missing all the time, and it comes such a non-issue with almost everyone from the media to the police, to the parents who believe their child has become a runaway. Sadie is all but a secondary character in her own life. I don't know the answer to the question. We may never know the answer to the question. If you've never read anything by the author before, this is the absolute perfect time to begin.

I went into this book knowing only three thing about it 1. that it was coming out in September 2.that it was a thriller and 3. that part of the book was told in the form of a podcast.

This book was a emotional rollercoaster I really don’t know how I’m going to write a review but I’m going to try to.

"And it begins, as so many stories do, with a dead girl."

Sadie is told in two different perspective west McCray’s a podcast host who is contacted by Sadie's adopted grandmother after she goes missing asking for his help in finding her and Sadie’s as she hunts down the man who kill her little sister Mattie.

I just finished this book last night and.. This book is heartbreaking and haunting and so real Courtney summers has written a world filled with darkness and monsters and it makes you realize that the monsters you make up are nowhere near as scary as the monsters that may walk among us.

Sadie is 19 and has been dealt a hard hand in life her mother is a drug addict with a revolving door of boyfriends some who don’t want to pay attention at all to the girl and one who paid too much attention to them. When their mother leaves Sadie drops out of high school at the age of 16 in order to take care of her sister and when Mattie is found dead it not just breaks Sadie it shatters her.

Though out the book we follow Sadie as she travels from one place to another in search for Mattie’s killer and the closer she get the more darkness seeps into her already dark broken world. this book deals with some really heavy subjects child abuse, sexual assault, drug addiction, addiction-shaming, PTSD, violence, child abduction, child death and Courtney summers doesn’t shy away from any of it making it a really hard read.

I really felt for Sadie she strong and clever and broken and she will stop at nothing to get what she wants even if that’s killing a man, the more I read her story the more I was worried about her and how her story was going to end and even though I knew it wasn’t going to end well I still hoped it would. There were pieces of Sadie that I recognized in myself which made this book a even harder read for me (seeing how raw and broken she was and how protective she was of her little sister. I’m the oldest in my family so I really understood how she felt towards Mattie).

I really loved how Courtney switched between the podcast and Sadie because we got to see her from two different sides though the eyes of the people who met her and her adopted grandmother and though Sadie’s.

This book is one of those books that seeps into your soul and makes you think about the world and how it is and all the hidden places we don’t see. It’s a book I feel will stay with me for a long time.

I’m not sure how this review turned out so I might have to come back later and rewrite it when I’m not so emotional. seriously guys it’s been forever since iv had a book fill me with so much emotion I don’t know what to do with myself or read next, I just want to lay on the floor and stay there for awhile thinking about everything that happened In this book and at the same time I really don’t want to dwell on the darkness in this book.

quote is from the ARC and can change.

I really enjoyed reading Sadie! The format was very unique and I haven't read any books like that. The part that really drew me in were the parts with the podcast. I like how it integrated with the rest of the story. The ongoing mystery was intriguing and kept me wanting to read until the very end. Sadie's chapters were very dynamic and Summer's writing truly conveyed emotion well. Her dialogue was well written and didn't drag on which tends to be an issue for authors. Overall, I think Sadie is a very intriguing mystery/thriller and truly unique to the YA genre.

Reminded me of a Gillian Flynn book, but it's still uniquely its own, which is really some of the highest praise I can think of for a thriller/mystery novel.

This was an excellent book. Its YA fiction, but doesn't read like YA at all. We follow Sadie on her mission to avenge the death of her sister and wrongs that have been done to her. We also know hear from the host of a podcast who has been attempting to find out what happened to Sadie. Through the rotating points of view we slowly piece together what happened to Sadie and her sister, both before and after the sister's death and Sadie's disappearance. The way it is laid out is excellent, as you get bits of information as you read along. I had to actually go back a few times to make sure I hadn't missed something. I hadn't, the story is just that well controlled.
I would recommend this book for older teens, as well as adults. It does have some pretty upsetting themes, so definitely not for younger teens or tweens.

Wow. This book really sucked me in. And I know it's going to stick with me for a long time. The format is different and it really brought the story to life. We get both West McCray's podcast and Sadie's first person POV. I loved the contrast. This story is gripping and heartbreaking, and I plowed through it. Hard to say much without spoiling something, so I'll just highly recommend it. First book I've read by this author, but definitely not the last. Hooked.

And it begins, as so many stories do, with a dead girl ........

ARC Provided via NetGalley in exchange for a honest review.

It's been a while since I've read a book that left me shook to my core. Sadie did that. I felt it to my bones.
The unique telling of this story is amazing, dual POVs and one being told as pod cast, is absolutely brilliant. I don't want to say to much as I feel everyone should go into Sadie like I did, knowing nothing but what is said in the blurb.
 I highlyrecommend Sadie. It classified as YA, but the genre is non existent. Just read it.

Side Note:
I feel like I shouldn't have requested this ARC, I feel like I can't write a review that would do Sadie justice.

The synopsis:
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.

My review: The format of the book is so unique and I looooved how it fluctuated between Sadie's pov to a podcast form. Crazy, right?? I love it when modern times make it into books. All I kept thinking when I was reading the podcast form was that I wish I had it in an audiobook! Which honestly I will buy as soon it is released. I want to listen to this book now that I have read it. The story itself was a great thriller and I didn't expect that from a YA book but it was really well written. I thought it was genius to give us just enough information for us to form our own conclusions without actually spelling anything out. It was 5/5

Sadie is a psychological mind game that will keep you scratching your head to the very end.

The book is not your average novel, especially how it is written. We jump between a few of the supporting characters, but also see the story play out from Sadie’s point of view. I was not an immediate fan of the layout, because that some chapters were written like a normal chapter would be, and others looked almost like a play, with who was talking written above it. After a few chapters, though, I figured out that was the times when you were suppose to be “listening” to West McCray on air. West McCray was radio host gone detective, who hears about this missing girl and when he digs a little deeper, finds her story to be incredibly interesting. Therefore, he takes his listeners on the ride with it by sharing what he has learned in a series of episodes. Those chapters read differently, but once I got use to it I could almost hear his voice in my head as I was reading the chapters written in that way.

As a reader, I like to relate to my characters, however I could not relate to Sadie. I’ve never been in her shoes. That doesn’t mean I didn’t connect with the book, because I mourned for her. I cheered her on. I was upset when she was upset. Sadie was like reading a really sad story in the news and wishing you could be there to help them out. You wanted to help Sadie, but you knew you couldn’t and that left a suspense in your gut knowing the book was not going to have your typical happy ever after.

Courtney Summers did a fantastic job of keeping me on the edge of my seat wondering what was going to happen next. Her characters were developed enough from the beginning, but you slowly got to peel back the layers throughout the book to learn more and figure out why the characters did what they did or behaved in a certain way. Summers writes suspense in a way I haven’t quite read before, giving you that feeling like you do know how this is going to end from the beginning, but then throwing you bread crumbs as she leads up to it. I loved the feeling of anxiety and suspense it slowly dragged me through.

If you are a fan of mystery, thrillers then Sadie is a book for you. Don’t expect it to be just like every other mystery novel; it is not. A great work of art from the lovely Courtney Summers. I’ll definitely be checking out her next novel.