BOOK REVIEW | Sadie - Courtney Summers
I love a good mystery. One of my favourite pastimes is watching crime documentaries on Netflix. Preferably when it's raining outside and I have my hands wrapped around a nice hot cup of tea. Some candles, maybe some chocolate... Long story short, I figured a book that's labelled both mystery and thriller would be one I'd enjoy.
Sadie is a riveting book about a murder and a missing nineteen-year-old girl who is on the hunt for her sister's killer. Sadie's life has never been very easy, with a drug addict for a mother and no father to fall back on. As the eldest, she tried her best to provide her sister Mattie with a normal life, a role she should not have to take on. When Mattie is found dead, naturally, her whole world collapses. Sadie sets out to find the killer by following the few small clues that she has.
The book follows two storylines: Sadie's and radio personality West McCray's, which is written as transcripts from his true-crime podcast The Girls. McCray is invested in the murder and disappearance ever since he was approached by May Beth Foster, Sadie and Mattie's caretaker since their mother left town. He is her last hope to find out what happened to the girls.
When reading Sadie's story, it is clear there is an aggressive undertone in her narrative. She regards herself as very mature, claiming she will kill her sister's murderer when she finds him, whilst she is mostly just broken and damaged as a result of her upbringing (e.g. the absence of motherly love and never being good enough). Despite the anger, every dark and seemingly angry or sad anecdote Sadie recounts has a silver lining, because they are followed by anecdotes about Mattie. Her sister's whole being puts Sadie's life into perspective. Mattie provided something good and stable. As a reader, I felt an intensely overwhelming sense of sisterly love seeping through every comparison and story Sadie tells about her sister.
Summers is not known for her unrealistic, happy endings. She thrives on dark, bleak narratives in which she stays true to her story. Murder, abandonment, disappearance... All very unsettling themes that are discussed both in Sadie and in Summers' other works.
The book was fast-paced and took me only a few hours to finish. It is fascinating to see how the two perspectives line up a little bit more with each passing chapter. It forms expectations that the two will eventually meet and when they don't... Well, let's just say the book leaves you feeling unsettled long after you put it down.
The podcast The Girls: Find Sadie is available everywhere podcasts can be downloaded. Listening to it gave a whole new meaning to the book. I strongly suggest you listening to it while reading Sadie's narrative alongside it. The descriptions people give about Sadie make you form an image of her in your head. An image that is quickly destroyed when reading her version of the events.
About Courtney Summers
There are few authors who publish bestselling books at the age of 22. Courtney Summers did. Her first book, Cracked Up to Be, was published in 2008. Eleven years later, she has written seven more books and two short stories, all characterized by troubled female protagonists.
Sadie was published in September 2018. The book has won an Odyssey Award, an Audie Award and a Cyblis Award and was nominated for the Edgar Award.
