Wednesday Books, 320 pp.
Published September 4, 2018
DISCLAIMER: I received a free physical ARC of this title from the publisher for review consideration. This did not inform or influence my opinion in any way.
A missing girl on a journey of revenge and a Serial-like podcast following the clues she's left behind.
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.
I would prefer to end this review on a happy note, so let's get this out of the way first: Colorado is not thousands of miles wide/high! Somehow a wild misjudgment in the size of the state has survived the first rounds of edits and made its way into review copies. A character beings and ends their travels all within the state's borders, yet their car is found "thousands of miles" away. It isn't just a typo, either. This country-sized error informs every distance and travel time quoted, which by the end of Sadie was enormously irritating considering how tightly plotted the story was. Hopefully it gets fixed before the final printing!
Ahem.
Courtney Summers finds a unique approach in the rapidly homogenizing thriller genre, unafraid to visit the grim places of the human soul and shine a light on how easily they are allowed to fester. Combining the rubbernecking glee of a true crime podcast and the personal narrative of Sadie, the missing girl at its center, ratchets tension while drawing attention to how even the best intentions can lead to misinterpretation and false leads.
The reluctant investigation of radio host West McCray dovetails with the narrative of Sadie Hunter, who disappeared from her home four months prior. Although the reason for her vanishing remains the subject of speculation by those left behind, it's immediately clear from Sadie's inner thoughts that she's driven by the murder of her younger sister, Mattie, the year before. She has a specific suspect in mind and a very specific fate in store for him, but with little more than a name and physical description to go off of, Sadie has a hunt ahead of her.
A high school drop-out with a stutter, Sadie suffers from a severe case of social awkwardness. This makes her quite unlikable, or at least off-putting, to many of the people she encounters along the way, yet she's quite endearing to the reader. Time and again she steps outside the realm of her personal comfort and experience to learn why her sister was found murdered next to a burning barn and bring justice to a killer the small town of Cold Creek was either unable or disinterested in apprehending. Far from superhuman, Sadie makes the best of her limited resources to do right by the sister she dearly loved.
Seen predominantly through the context of his one-off podcast The Girls, West is less a character than he is a guide. Thorough and methodical, he uncovers some of the same secrets that Sadie did months before: a closeted pedophile, numerous false identities for one man that trail across Colorado. What he and The Girls do best, though, is slyly point out to readers how even investigative journalism cannot always capture the full story of a case.
Survivors—or simply non-missing-persons—are the ones left behind to tell a story. Often, the one unfolding on West's podcast is different in small, yet important, details from the one Sadie actually lived. Some discrepancies don't amount to much, while others threaten to shape an incorrect view of Sadie for those not privy to the unbiased truth. At times it feels like a critique of the voyeurism that drives programs like Serial, Making a Murderer, and The Staircase: no matter how unbiased the approach, entertainment is still a key factor in the true crime industry.
Setting aside the irksome misconceptions about American geography (and they truly were irritating by the end), Sadie is a taut and clever thriller that doesn't shy away from the darkness of crime and the vengeful feelings it can inspire. Its unique structure should appease readers looking for something fresh within the mystery/thriller genre and draw in plenty of new fans as well.
RATING:
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