At the moment both Candyce and I are participating in the O.W.L.’s readathon and one of the prompts was to read a book with a white cover. After coming across the audiobook of Sadie on Scribd I decided to finally pick that one up. And today I’ll share my thoughts with you all!

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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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Sadie by Courtney Summers
Published by Wednesday Books on 04/09/2018
Genres: Mystery
Pages: 308
Goodreads

Cover

I really like this cover! In general I don’t like people on covers but whenever they do it like this, I actually really like it. The color scheme on the cover is amazing and I just adore the simplicity of the cover. It might be one of my favorite contemporary covers.

“And Sadie, if you’re out there, please let me know. Because I can’t take another dead girl.”

Audiobook

I normally don’t include this segment in a review but I thought it was definitely necessary for this one. The book is partly told by Sadie and partly told as a podcast a couple of weeks or even months later. I loved how the podcast was done in the audiobook, it started with a little theme song every time and they have a full cast. A full cast is already a big plus but the theme song really brought it to life for me. I felt like I was listening to a real life podcast and that upped the book for sure. If you read this story the ‘traditional’ way, I would recommend looking up the podcast on spotify or another podcast platform. They uploaded the podcasts parts from the book and like I said, I loved it!

I wish his darkness lived outside of him, because you have to know it’s there to see it. Like all real monsters, he hides in plain sight.

Review

We follow two timelines in this story, Sadie and the podcast ‘The Girls’. The podcast tries to figure out where Sadie went. A couple of weeks (I think) before our story starts, Sadie’s sister dies and now Sadie has vanished. We follow Sadie on her road to avenge her sister and then there is the podcast trying to figure out where Sadie went.

The book is a pretty slow going mystery story in my opinion. It was cool to see both Sadie following her path and getting the perspective of the podcast on what she was doing. I liked seeing the story from those two perspectives, it made for an interesting read. However, it also made for a pretty slow moving story. At the start of the story we don’t know that much yet and it takes quite a while before you figure some things out. I don’t mind slower stories but I do need something to care about. Listening to the audiobook really helped because I loved listening to the podcast. For me the audiobook was truly the reason I kept going pretty fast, I wished the podcast was real.

Sadie is the character we get to know best I’d say. In the end I didn’t feel like I knew her very well but I did think she was written like a real person. The other characters were okay to read about, but most of them don’t get enough pagetime to be super developed or interesting. Sadie was an interesting character to read about and I really felt for her and her shitty circumstances.

What I liked most about the story was the ending. The audiobook made it all more enjoyable but it wasn’t until the last couple of chapters that I really started to love this book. I wasn’t expecting to end on such a high with this story since it was so slow. The plot doesn’t seem that great when you’re halfway trough but at the end, for me it was all worth it. This might be one of those book you keep on thinking about!

People don’t change. They just get better at hiding who they really are.

Even when reading I did not expect this book to effect me like this in the end. I would highly recommend reading the book and if you can definitely go for the audiobook. The book was pretty hyped a while ago, did you pick it up during the hype or are you still waiting to read it? Come talk to me in the comments!