Content warnings: child abuse, sexual abuse and assault, violence, child abduction, child death, and pedophilia.
How do you come out of depression? – This is the first thing I Googled after finishing this book. Uff, what a roller coaster of emotions and I certainly found it difficult to manage them. I am generally a reader who prefers happy endings to a book rather than books that leave me stressed out. But, Sadie was an exception and I am glad I made the decision to read it.
People don’t change. They just get better at hiding who they really are.
The book starts off by informing the readers what to expect: “It’s a story about family, about sisters, and the untold lives lived in small-town America. It’s about the lengths we go to protect the ones we love… and the high price we pay when we can’t. And it begins, as so many stories do, with a dead girl.” These lines warn us to get ready to expect worse things to happen in the upcoming chapters.
Sadie Hunter is a 19-year-old daughter of a single mom and an addict, Claire, who went to California leaving her back along with her 13-year-old sister Mattie was found dead one day after she went missing. The girls are taken care of by their surrogate grandmother, May Beth Foster in a trailer park located in a small town called Cold Creek, Colorado. The police could not find any clues leading to finding the unknown person who killed Mattie.
Sadie could not keep her mind at ease knowing that the person responsible for her little sister’s death was out there. So, she decides to take things in her hands and one day she buys a car listed on Craigslist and goes on a mission to find Keith, who was one of Claire’s ex-boyfriend, believing that he was the one responsible for Mattie’s death.
From here, the story pans into two different perspectives: one from Sadie, who narrates the things that she does to find where Keith is, and the other from a reporter, West McCray, who was brought into the search for Sadie by her surrogate grandmother. McCray tries to trace back the path and clues left by Sadie to find what actually happened to her and also gather information for his new podcast named “The Girls”.
Why was Sadie trying to find Keith? Did Sadie find Keith? Did McCray manage to track down what happened to Sadie? These are some of the questions that the author answers in the final chapters of the book in a reality-filled painful way. The author does a really great job in answering all the questions, yet there is no better way to say it, other than in an excruciating way.
It was a terrible thing, sure, but we live in a world that has no shortage of terrible things. You can’t stop for all of them.
Sadie is a story that confronts you with the sickening truth that when there isn’t even a strand of humanity to hold on to, let alone a thread to hang on to and follow into the dark, you are only plucking at strings of conscience that will yield no sound. Courtney Summers conveyed the message in a bold, painful and truthful way to the people who don’t know about the horror stories of missing girls in small towns.
If you would like to pick this book for a read, I would highly recommend you try the audiobook version of this because this is the best audiobook I have ever heard (I haven’t heard much, but still it’s the best). It is an innovative production by Macmillan Audio, featuring more than 30 voices and presenting it in a true-crime-like podcast. The audiobook won the 2019 Audie Award for Young Adult Audiobook.
So, do I recommend this book? Hell yeah. Perfect for fans of the true crime genre or gritty YA mysteries. If you’re after an exacting, heartbreaking read, Sadie will stay with you longer even after you close the book.