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Sadie

Courtney Summers

Start date: January 2, 2019

Finish date: January 30, 2019

Discussion: Books of the Month

Why we're reading this: January 2019 YA Book of the Month
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What Members Thought

Nov 03, 2018 Flying Monkey rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2018

It took me a while to get into this, but after a while I was fully engrossed. Great book with lots of emotion. Highly recommend.

10 likes · Like · see review

May 20, 2019 Paula Phillips rated it liked it

This particular book I have had for a while on my to-read list as the idea of a missing girl and a murder mystery intrigued me, and this book itself has had lots of publicity surrounding it. Good strong marketing to capture the reader’s attention. The book starts with Sadie's younger sister it looks like going off and then eventually being murdered. Sadie having no-one else in her world and her corner, decides to head off to find the truth, and that truth starts with whom she thinks is her fathe ...more

4 likes · Like · see review

Oct 09, 2018 Allison boozy bookworm added it

Shelves: fiction, novels, women, drama, relationships, horror-suspense, paperbacks

DNF'd at page 94 ...more

4 likes · Like · see review

Jan 04, 2019 Susan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I loved this book. I like the ending and how it wasn't all done in a neat and clean way that most mystery books are done....most are done a little to clean. I might be the only one that likes this ending but we all know what happens.

Sadie is one of two girls with a mother with addiction problems. She pretty much has taken over raising her youngest sister since their mother is checked out most of the time. Mattie is the little sister who Sadie has given her all too. She has helped Mattie love the ...more

3 likes · Like · see review

Feb 16, 2021 Kristin rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-in-2021, audiobook, stand-alones, mystery

4.5 stars

Such a heart wrenching story of love and loss. The audiobook is fantastic!
Trigger warnings of child abuse, rape, molestation, and pedophilia.

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Jun 06, 2021 Bonnie rated it liked it

Shelves: young-adult, ya-thriller, 2018-books

Courtney Summers' Some Girls Are was love at first read for me. It instantly made her one of my must-read authors, even though I've found some of her other books hit or miss (not a fan of her teenage dystopia series This is Not a Test, but then again I'm not a fan of the whole genre so I can't blame Summers entirely for that one).

A common theme of Courtney Summers' books is a girl who has been chipped down to a hard, flinty core by the sharp savagery of the world. The cruel hand that life has d Courtney Summers' Some Girls Are was love at first read for me. It instantly made her one of my must-read authors, even though I've found some of her other books hit or miss (not a fan of her teenage dystopia series This is Not a Test, but then again I'm not a fan of the whole genre so I can't blame Summers entirely for that one).

A common theme of Courtney Summers' books is a girl who has been chipped down to a hard, flinty core by the sharp savagery of the world. The cruel hand that life has dealt to Sadie Hunter is poverty, an addicted and uncaring mother who ultimately abandons her and - shortly before the book begins - the murder of the younger sister who was her entire world. Sadie has left on a quest to kill the man she believes is responsible for her younger sister's death, a man who has done horrible things to Sadie herself. At the same time, a Serial-like podcast is covering the story of Sadie's disappearance and the podcaster is on her trail. As a true crime junkie and a Serial lover, I am always instantly drawn to a book where a podcast is part of the premise. Summers uses the podcast framework effectively, and I appreciated jumping between the podcast and Sadie's perspective (although by the end I was getting pretty worried that the podcaster would figure out who Sadie was hunting down, and alert him by announcing it on the podcast).

One device I decidedly did not appreciate was Sadie seeing visual and audio hallucinations of her younger self and her narration observing it like it was really happening in that moment. I could see how this could work if it was a TV show, but in this medium it always threw me because I would get four to five sentences in to her hallucination before I would realize that there was not, in fact, a little girl in the room. It was just a memory. Example:

I creep down the hall and find a bathroom. I push the door open and take a shocked step back.
"G-get out!" a girl yells. "I w-want y-you t-to g-get out of h-here!"
She's eleven, naked in the tub. Her knees are curled up to her chest and her arms are cross around them..."

Sadie has a stutter (something that I don't think I've read in a main character before, so I really appreciated Summers' representation of a badass young woman with a stutter). So the fact that the little girl that Sadie is hallucinating always has a stutter as well should be a clue that it's just a memory. But I thought that there was just a second character with a stutter being introduced! Also, the fact that Sadie is having visual and audio hallucinations is completely glossed over. It seems to be a pretty serious breaking of reality if she is taking a step back because she thinks she is seeing a real little girl. But it doesn't seem like these hallucinations are meant to show a deterioration of Sadie's mental state. Instead, they are more a vehicle to reveal Sadie's past.

I appreciate what Summers was doing with this novel, even though I never emotionally connected with it. I don't know what made Some Girls Are such a punch in the gut and this book something I feel like I'm clinically observing from a distance. ...more

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