“And Sadie, if you’re out there, please let me know. Because I can’t take another dead girl.”
Sadie is alone. No mother. And now no sister. Only a burning desire and knowledge no one else has. West, with an assignment he doesn’t want, answers the pleading cry - ‘Sadie is gone.’ All they have to go on is her abandoned car and a dead little sister. Can West discover what’s happened to Sadie, or will she be able to tell us herself? Together, their stories collide, one in the past and one in the present, revealing more than either thought possible.
Today, books are becoming less like stories and more like windows into stark realities. Haunting stories. I’ve been talking about this a lot on the blog recently. It could be the books I’ve picked up, or it could be that authors are using their craft to tell more. Do more. Show more. Stories are meant to take us on a quest, to open our minds to concepts that we may never have thought of before. Sadie fits right in.
Sadie begins right in the middle. Immediately readers are given the information that a 13-year-old girl was brutally murdered and now her sister is missing. Not a delightful start to a story, but Summers just drops the reader in, laying the groundwork. She establishes where Sadie is from and what her background is right off the bat. Readers are left without any questions.
“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.”
Summers also makes it clear that the format is going to be a little different. Mixing in first person POV and Podcast style scripts, she weaves the two together. And personally, I loved it. Normally, I want a good old fashion story, but Illuminae convinced me changing things up can be good, and Summers falls right in with the greats.
The Podcast added elements I’m not sure could have been pulled off otherwise. It would have been a completely different story. Told not through a detective per usual, readers are instead given a character off the streets. A man hosting his first podcast with a wife and family of his own. Not some cop with a hard record of seeing the bad things. West instead, is seeing this dark side of the world for the first time, mixing his own emotions into the story by the end. Even battling with his desire to see the mystery out. The Podcast also lets readers see what’s happening back at homebase without slowing down the script.
Well… most of the time.
Here’s where it didn’t work. Since the Podcast is discovering things after the fact, because Summers shows them through Sadie’s eyes first, the Podcast tended to repeat some facts. I don’t think it could have been helped, but hearing the same old knowledge of what happened tended to bore me.
“Or maybe you get so used to the mess of home, you convince yourself over time everything's exactly where it belongs.”
But let’s not leave the fact, that here Summers did something different. She gave a different perspective, a different format, a downright different style to break the normal humdrum offered to readers. She pushed the boundaries. Something writers should take note of. Don’t be afraid to be different.
My last negative comment is with Sadie. Her character profile was fine. In fact, all the characters were so well done, they played to the old adage of write each person as if they are the protagonist of the story. But, I struggled connecting with Sadie on an emotional level. Which ultimately made me feel horrible. Here is this story, a sister on a mission of revenge, that lacked Sadie’s emotional turmoil coming through. There was just a disconnect that didn’t allow me, as the reader, to be fully immersed in the pain and suffering.
“Paul taught me a person committed to silence can suggest importance, strength. So long as they’re a man, I mean. It’s not an option when you’re a girl, not unless you want people to think you’re a bitch.”
But that’s it guys. The rest of the story is pure magic. I’m even going to give Sadie a whooping 4.5 stars.
Full cast of characters that each played a role to the overall story. Realistic storyline, without the crazy magic coincidences that can happen in mystery novels. Perfectly established backstories and settings. Excellent prose that made me cry as a writer. And dark in all the right places.
Just downright masterful. Summers shows readers a world that many of us don’t see. Drugs, poverty, abuse, it’s all there. Painted to show a sister and how far someone will go in the end. I highly recommend this read. I mean, the list of things you can learn as a writer reading Sadie is staggering. I personally plan on grabbing my own copy and studying it from cover to cover. But if you need an idea of each point, pay attention to the following when reading:
Prose
Characters
Style
Background
Plot
Timeline
Reveals
Foreshadowing
Etc...etc...etc…
Happy Reading.
Love Kait.
Reading Challenge: 93/100