Sadie is going to kill a man. She’s looking for the man she believes killed her little sister Mattie, and when she finds him, she is going to watch him die. West McCray is looking for Sadie. He has created a podcast called The Girls and he’s trying to find out what happened to her after she left home when Mattie died. Told in alternating viewpoints (Sadie’s first person account and scripts of The Girls), this book is masterful and heartbreaking. If I hadn’t been reading it on my phone, I would have thrown it across the room when I finished. (But like. In a good way. Mostly.) Courtney Summers has destroyed me once again.

This book was absouslty heartbreaking. Sadie is 19 when her 13 year old sister Mattie is murdered. No one know who killed her but Sadie know. She is on a quest to found the person who hurt her sister and kill them.
This book starts out with a radio show/ podcast called The Girlshosted by West McCray. He is talking to Sadie and Mattie's family trying to trying to found out what happened to Sadie because she went missing and know no one can found her. As the story goes on they talk to people that have seen her a long way of her journey to found the person who hurt Maddie.
As the story goes on we found out that Sadie's Mom's boyfriend Keith sexually abused both girls and Sadie also knows he killed her sister. She is making it her mission to found him and kill him.
Sadie does find Keith and when he comes back to his he is living at his girlfriend says he was hurt and latered died. The book leaves you to believe that Sadie had something to do with her death. But the sad thing is that after Keith dies Sadie also goes missing and no one sees her again. Is she died is she okay? I think the ending was very powerful. McCray the host of the host just wants to know what happened to Sadie. Thank you Netgalley and St Martins Press for an ARC. This book is out September 4 and you don't want to not read this book!

Firstly thank you to Net galley for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Well this was a very dark YA with very mature themes. Trigger warning for sexual abuse.

The story follows Sadie (obviously) as she goes on a journey to find out what happened to her little sister Mattie. The story is told from 2 perspectives, Sadies and West McCrays who is making a podcast surrounding Sadies disappearance.

There are a few notable side characters that actually add something to the story, I find quite a lot in YA that side characters are plot fillers usually.

There are many dark themes including child abuse and violence which I really wasn’t expecting. I’ve read 2 of Courtney Summers books (1 I liked and 1 I didn’t) but this was really unexpected from her but handled very very well.

I enjoyed the story and it kept me guessing throughout.

This book really got under my skin. It bugged me. I was hooked and read fast as lightning looking for answers and what happens next. I couldn’t stop reading. It was so good, I personally didn’t love the ending so it’s a 4.5 but I understood it and it was what I expected. I think it ended perfectly for the story. I also LOVED the podcast pieces and they felt very true to genre as someone who knows quite a bit about podcasting.

I saw this book in a buzzed-books article and was immediately intrigued. This novel is told in two parts: first through the podcast transcript for a new Serial-like show called The Girls. The second part is in the first person narration of Sadie, the missing girl who is at the heart of the mystery of The Girls Podcast. The two storylines are told about six months apart, and clues to what Sadie is doing and why she's doing it unfold through each storyline.

This book is both a revenge story and a story about how far we'll go for the people we love. Sadie was a fantastic protagonist. She felt real to me; not a nineteen year old with superhuman strength and will to accomplish what she needs to, but rather someone who is hurting and angry (with very good reason) and who has nothing left to lose.

I don't think I've ever read a book quite like this one. I loved the dual narrative structure, and once I started, I could not put it down. It is a really dark story and triggers abound, but Summers handles them with a deft hand. This was my first book by Summers, but it won't be my last.

This was the first book I read by this author, and I absolutely loved it. It was compelling, intense, and utterly enthralling. The writing was superbly executed and engaging. The very serious subject matter of sexual abuse addressed in this story was dealt with in a realistic manner with all the raw emotions associated with it.
Very highly recommended!

I've heard nothing but rave reviews from others and this book does not disappoint. This is a YA thriller perfect for the tail end of your summer read. The writing is great, allowing you to dive into the story as if it were your own, and the characters are phenomenal and relatable. This brings to YA a genre not often covered and Summers perfectly touched on the not-so-sunny-side of teens lives - a theme we don't often get to see.

Raw and real. The writing is beautiful and thought-provoking. The strength and resilience of Sadie will remain with me for a long time. I like the setup of the book in which we follow Sadie back in time as she runs away to try to track down her sister Maddie's murderer alternated with chapters of the transcript of a podcast of a journalist trying to find Sadie herself. I would highly recommend this book to young adult and adults . I received this book as an advanced reader's copy from NetGalley in July 2018.

Serial + The Girls, with a pinch of Vigilante = Sadie

** Trigger warning for violence against women and children, including rape. **

I’m going to kill a man.

I’m going to steal the light from his eyes. I want to watch it go out. You aren’t supposed to answer violence with more violence but sometimes I think violence is the only answer. It’s no less than he did to Mattie, so it’s no less than he deserves.

I don’t expect it to bring her back. It won’t bring her back.

It’s not about finding peace. There will never be peace.

I’m not under any illusions about how little of me will be left after I do this one thing. But imagine having to live every day knowing the person who killed your sister is breathing the air she can’t, filling his lungs with it, tasting its sweetness. Imagine him knowing the steady weight of the earth under his feet while her body is buried six feet below it.

This is the furthest I’ve been from anything that I know.

###

My eyes burn, and tears slip down my cheeks and I can’t even imagine how pathetic I look. Girl with a busted face, torn-up arm, begging for the opportunity to save other girls. Why do I have to beg for that?

###

Nineteen-year-old Sadie Hunter has had a pretty effed up life. Born to a young, single mom with multiple addictions (alcohol, cocaine, heroin) and a rotating roster of enabling boyfriends, Sadie grew up in a trailer park in the small, struggling town of Cold Creek, Colorado. (Population: eight hundred.) She developed a stutter at a young age, but her mother Claire never sought treatment; consequently, Sadie was bullied, isolated, and shamed for it, for most of her life.

Claire’s own mother, Irene, died of breast cancer when Claire was only nineteen herself; Sadie’s striking physical resemblance to Irene was just one of many reasons why Claire had trouble bonding with her daughter. Younger sister Mattie Southern (she got the matrilineal surname; Sadie did not – telling, that) arrived six years later, and Sadie tried her best to be Mattie’s mother and father. When Claire ran out on her and Mattie, Sadie dropped out of high school to support her family. She was only sixteen.

After two years of limping along, with no small support from May Beth Foster – manager of the trailer park and their deceased grandmother’s best friend – Mattie disappeared. Her body was found three days later in an apple orchard several miles outside of town. Nine months later, Sadie too goes missing; her car is found thousands of miles away, in a town called Farfield. When the local police write Sadie off as just another runaway, May Beth reaches out to West McCray, journalist and host of the podcast ALWAYS OUT THERE, for help.

Told in the alternating perspectives of Sadie (as she tracks down her sister’s killer) and West (in the form of his investigative podcast, THE GIRLS, as he retraces Sadie’s steps, now three months cold), we embark on a SERIAL-type mystery that’s also a biting interrogation of rape culture, class, and misogyny.

I mean, I guess you could shelve SADIE under “mystery,” but it’s so much more than that. In a way, it’s a mystery within a mystery: who killed Mattie, and what happened to Sadie? Sadie already knows the answer to the former, and it’s revealed probably halfway into the story. The bigger question is what became of Sadie when she reached the end of her journey – and this is a blank we readers are left to fill in ourselves. In this way, the ending is a tease, but also a blessing: realistically, Sadie’s fate was likely not a happy one. And yet, by leaving things as she does, Summers allows us to hope, to dream, to retain our faith in a flawed young woman who wanted nothing than to save other girls like herself.

SADIE is also stark and uncompromising look at rape culture, much in the vein of ALL THE RAGE. Summers’s writing is at once beautiful and cutting; she dissects all manner of sexist tropes and stereotypes, from the Manic Pixie Dream Girl to the idea that men are only truly capable of grasping women’s humanity when they have a daughter of their own to care about and fear for and worry over. (Claire’s confrontation with West? Pure cathartic bliss.)

Sadie, Mattie, Claire, May Beth, Marlee – Summers has populated Sadie with a cast of complex, nuanced women characters. Sadie rather reminds me of a more realistic version of Alex Craft, the protagonist in Mindy McGinnis’s THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES. (Let’s face it, we can’t all be cold and calculating feminist serial killers.) Her relationships with Mattie, Claire, and May Beth are fascinating in their messiness. I love how Summers challenges our assumptions by allowing various characters to offer their own versions of oft-told stories at the 11th hour, long after our own impressions of them have begun to harden.

If you’ve never read a Courtney Summers book, you owe it to yourself to correct that ASAP. My first ALL THE RAGE (amazing!), and with SADIE she’s fast becoming a favorite author of mine. I wouldn’t quite call SADIE a rape revenge story, but it’s a pretty fine distinction, and if you “enjoy” that subgenre as much as I, SADIE is a good choice on this front too.

When I first read a sample of the book I loved it! I was so excited to be able to read the entire book! Courtney Summers has become one of my new favorite authors. I can't wait to read more books from her!

A tough read as it deals with the vulnerability of children and when adults abuse. Sadie is on a mission to revenge the death of her younger sister Mattie. Told in the perspective of Sadie and a podcast producer whose creating a show to discover what happens to Sadie during her journey. Great read but be warned it’ll break your heart a bit.

Sadie is a girl who loses her whole world violently. This story follows her, in search of the truth. And justice. Told in parts pod cast and Sadie, this book does hook you. Its probably one of the best I've read so far.

I liked this book, but wasn’t crazy about the whole podcast thing. It was confusing for me at times. And I would’ve really liked to know what ultimately happened to Sadie. Overall though it was a good book and I’d definitely read this author again.

I picked this book up on a whim from net galley and what an incredible read it was! Families are incredibly cryptic creatures to understand and trying to delve into the reasons we do the things we do as parents and children is yet another depth to families. This book covers difficult situations from so many dynamics, written as if you were in the middle of podcast with alternating chapters from the point of our main character, Sadie. I was hooked from the first page and found it impossible to put this book down. This is one talented writer here! There is a depth to this story that I wasn't prepared for and it will leave you hanging on the edge of your seat until the very last page. Don't miss this one! Thank you #netgalley!

What an incredible story. So powerful and emotional. This is the first book I read from this author, no one recommended and I didn't know about this book till I started seeing it everywhere on Facebook and Instagram. Lots of people got print ARCs (totally jealous btw) and I just needed to know what it was about. I was lucky to find it on NetGalley (eARC) and to be approved. I read what it was about and had to read it right away. I loved the way it was written, we get to hear the story from the radio station guy (West) who is trying to find Sadie and we also see Sadie's side. Sadie's side is months behind and when we read West's side we are in the present ( I believe) which is why it was a bit scary because you just wanted to know what happened. This story is sometimes difficult and might make the reader cry. Will definitely make you think and make you sad as well. This is not a happy, will make you laugh story, but it is actually filled with love. The love of a sister desperate to make things right and the love of a neighbor, a grandmotherly figure, who is desperate to find Sadie.
That ending was difficult, I even went back in the story to read again because I wanted to make sure I knew what happened to Sadie.
This one will stay with me for a while. Really great and will definitely recommend.
There are quite a bit of difficult topics in the story so be warned.

Books that are partly written in the form of a podcast are my new favorite thing (granted, I have only read two books that fit the bill, Sadie and Are You Sleeping by Kathleen Barber). If you’re not a fan of podcasts, the writing style may not be for you, but I love podcasts so, to have that format intertwined with normal narrative is refreshing. The podcast element allows you to see events unfold and watch pieces fall together through different perspectives but it is much different than books that simply alternate between multiple narrators.

Sadie has lived a rough life, to say the least, and now she’s on a mission to avenge her sister’s death. We venture through Colorado with Sadie in the present tense as she hunts the murderer. The chapters narrated by Sadie typically end abruptly, leaving you hanging and thirsty for more, as the book shifts to the podcast format. Then, we are taken on a separate adventure as journalist West McCray searches for Sadie in the past tense. The pace at which events unfold and secrets are uncovered is exceptional--nothing happens too late or too early--and that is largely because the writing is well balanced between the podcast by West McCray and Sadie’s own narration.

I give huge thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC in exchange for my honest, unbiased review.

Oh man, this was such a strong, emotional, heartbreaking story. It wasn’t my favorite but I really felt for Sadie who was on a quest to avenge her sister’s murder. My favorite part was actually the podcast that was made to find Sadie and the whereabouts of her. I could definitely see that on a show like Investigation Discovery.

Trigger Warnings: pedophilia and sexual abuse

Well, this kinda fell flat for me. Based on the premise, I was rather interested in reading this book, but there were several things about it that hindered the impact it could have had if executed differently.

I thought Sadie’s character was done rather well, especially the consistency of her stutter and how that impacted her. Her emotions regarding her sister, Keith, and her speech impediment were described in a way that effectively showed how those things influenced her decisions or behaviors. This, however, was the only strong aspect of the novel for me.

On the other hand, the alternating POVs between Sadie and the podcast seemed a bit unnecessary for the majority of the book since the podcast summed up what was already described in Sadie’s chapters. There were moments when the interviews of different people enhanced the story, but for the the most part, the repetition of certain events within the podcast added nothing to the plot. When I heard that part of this book was told in podcast format, I was even more excited to read this, but I would have preferred if Summers had written it in one the two POVs.

The transitions within Sadie's chapters were also confusing, hindering the flow of the story. Memories often came up without warning, making me think they were currently happening even though they actually weren't.

Also, Sadie is a definitely a mystery, but the lack of surprising events or reveals made everything that happened seem kinda... meh. I don’t know. When I read a mystery, I expect to be shocked by something or on the edge of my seat to read the next chapter, but unfortunately, I didn’t experience that when reading this book.

Overall, Sadie is definitely unique, as it explores subjects like sexual abuse, pedophilia, and poverty, but the other factors mentioned above kept me from rating it higher.

SADIE has become one of my favorite reads thus far this year. I was hooked from the first page. This book stole my soul and I don’t know if I’ll ever get it back.

The chapters flash back and forth between Sadie hunting down this man she believes murdered her sister and an interview of Sadie’s loved one and reporter searching for her.

This story is haunting yet gripping. If you are a fan of The Female of the Species then this book is for you. Everyone read this!!!

first of all, what a beautiful cover! I loved the story and the characters were so engaging throughout the story.