This was one of my favorite books of 2018. TW for sexual assault, abuse. The interspersed podcasts add an interesting change to the prose. Highly recommended.

The format of this book made it a very quick read. I liked this book and would definitely recommend it.

This book was highly anticipated and I was so appreciative to receive an e-arc from Netgalley.

It's such a cool premise and I'be heard nothing but good things about this. The audiobook is receiving especially high praise. Unfortunately, due to personal life experiences and triggers, I personally was unable to finish the book.

I'm giving it a four star rating based on what I was able to finish, the amazing audiobook, and the incredible marketing.

Very engrossing, and the format is really exciting. The back and forth between the podcast and Sadie's journey created a lot of tension. While the mystery wasn't the most exciting thing I'd ever read, and readers could see right through it, the format was exciting, especially since true crime podcasts are so popular.

I cannot express how grateful I am to have gotten to read this book. This may just have come at the right time in my life – and maybe the right time in many peoples lives. It made me sad, and angry, and curious… I felt weighed down by guilt. That is not normally a feeling a book evokes from me, but in this case, it was right. This book is doing something really interesting too – its including modern popular media.

I know I am not the only person addicted too and riveted by murder and crime podcasts. There is one in particular that always stood above the rest to me, called Up and Vanished. It’s about this kind of average Joe, who sets out to find out what happened to a woman who had been missing for over 10 years, and it’s amazing what he does. As soon as I started reading Sadie, I immediately got those UAV vibes. I could hear it all perfectly in my head. At the time, I had not yet discovered that Macmillan was putting out actual podcast episode leading up to the release of the book. I love this form of mixed media, it really helps add to the chapters that are the podcast transcripts, and it makes the book feel that much more somber, like you are carrying the weight of every person they interview during the course of it.

Okay, now that I’ve raved about how interesting that is, lets get to more important things – the story.

I almost don’t know where to begin. My heart still feels so heavy. That’s great description for this book, heavy. Mattie’s death alone is dripping in sadness. A young girl, gone so quickly, no explanation, in such a devastating way…. just like something ripped from today’s headlines. This lead Sadie down a dangerous path, looking for both vengeance for herself and her sister, and redemption, I think, for herself alone. She knew the world had turned it’s back on her, like so often happens to young people in these situations, so she had to take it into her own hands.

We follow Sadie and the podcast in alternating chapters, the podcast seemingly on the Sadie’s trail, but with months in between. Pieces of a puzzle all slowly creep together, leaving you feeling unsettled and grim. When long buried secrets are brought into the light of day, it’s shocking and heartbreaking.

This book is oozing sadness and loneliness. It’s weeping for childhoods lost in time, lost to monsters. It’s heart aches for children from broken families, where there is no one to be there for you but YOU. The amount of guilt that settled in me after reading this was enough to send me looking for my own answers, to questions I wish I hadn’t asked. After I found myself down a Google black hole of statistics on missing women and children, on how many were found alive, found dead, had been abused, or never found at all, I felt so guilty and sad that there is nothing I can do. I imagine what they could have gone through, possibly very similar to events in this book. This book forced me to think about what is happening around me, in the most painful way, but in a way that we all need. We need to be aware.

Maybe this book will make you long for answers and want to hold your family closer at night. Maybe you will read this and feel fine, complacent in your safe bubble. But I hope it makes everyone just spend some time thinking about the reality of this book, and all the lives lost to the monsters hiding in plain sight.

A very, very powerful read. To be perfectly honest, I did not realize that this was classified as young adult fiction when I was reading this book. In fact, I wouldn't recommend it for younger teens.. The themes, tone, action, everything are geared more toward older readers. The book is very dark and often depressing. But I couldn't put it down.

This is not a book you forget easily. It stays with you long after the last page. The chapters alternate between the perspectives of Sadie, a handicapped teenager who has runaway from home following the death of her sister, and the host of an internet blog who is investigating Sadie's disappearance months later. The narration style took me a couple of chapters to get used to, but I enjoyed fitting the pieces of the story together.. Not many of the characters are particularly likable, but that's OK. In this book, you don't expect them to be.

As for the mystery of why Sadie ran away, the audience will figure it out pretty quickly. But that's OK, too. Like I said, the true power of the book is following along with the investigator months later and as he puts together the pieces of Sadie's flight, often giving new meaning to the events that the reader has already seen Sadie take part in.

The ending realistic, but I found it satisfying. To me, there was a hint of redemption for some characters at the end, and that gave me hope. that what Sadie and her sister went through will cause other characters to grow and try to be better.

Again, it's a powerful book that I recommend; but not for younger audiences.

This book was INCREDIBLE!! I keep recommending it to people. What a unique and very important story. I loved every minute of it.

It's been a long time since I cursed in a review, but I have to put it out there: Sadie fucked me up. It left me pretty hollow, but I guess that's what the author's trying to accomplish. Remember when Courtney Summers wrecked me with All the Rage? Well, she decided to come back for part two with Sadie.

"And it begins, as so many stories do, with a dead girl."


☎ Sadie is about, well, Sadie, who's looking for the man who killed her little sister. She grew up as Mattie's mother figure, so when Mattie's body was found dead, Sadie set off on a dangerous mission to bring justice down to the killer's door. This book was about Sadie's journey to seek closure for her sister's death, at whatever cost it took.

☎ There aren't a lot of characters in this book, which is okay. We get to focus on Sadie, who is a character with so much depth. She's always had to mature faster, since her mother wasn't the best mother out there. This made her incredibly strong, and her love for her little sister was off the charts. I had so much respect for her, and I don't know how I would've handled being in her situation--plus she also had a stutter, which made it hard for people to take her seriously.

That being said, it was so hard for me to really get into Sadie's head. I probably wasn't in the right mood when I read this, but I felt detached from her somehow. Or maybe it's because she herself felt detached from the world when she lost her sister. I can't really say, but this made it hard for me to really fall in love with her and her story.

☎ We don't just read from Sadie's perspective! Half of this book is told via a podcast, narrated by West McCray. It was incredibly interesting seeing an outsider's perspective on everything, and it made the story that much more real and modern. (If you love audiobooks, I do highly recommend listening to this book for a more 3D experience!)

☎ This book is so raw and totally relevant. Courtney Summers is basically the Queen of Heavy Themes Done Right. There's no sugarcoating in her books. (TW/CW) In Sadie, we dealt with pedophilia, child abuse, sexual assault, and murder--but we focused more on Sadie herself, and her struggle for justice. It was about fear, regret, and recklessness.

☎ The ending left me broken. I don't want to talk much about it to save you from spoilers, but let's just say that it really worked with the rest of the book.

Sadie was a shock of a book i didn't know i needed. I enjoy true crime shows, probably because its possible to feel like you learn things but remain detached. It was harder to stay detached with this book. The duel perspectives running concurrently were half podcast and half real time/flashback. Seeing the hurt and pain in Sadie in real time was hard. But the book was raw and it was real and im beyond glad that i read it. the pacing was solid and you dont ever want to stop because the action is always moving. But you almost need to pause because you have to process, and being so immersed in it makes you feel raw. All of the stars. This was an amazing book i wish never ever had to be written.

4,5 ⭐️

Unexpectedly “Sadie” was very good. And I’m not often so fond of books I’ve requested on the NetGalley.

I loved the format of the book: some chapters as a transcription of podcast “The Girls” about a missing girl (Sadie) and others are narrated by Sadie herself.

I felt like I was listening to an ordinary podcast-show while reading podcast’s chapters. I was interested in the story, how it would end, wanted to discover all the mysteries of Sadie’s case and understand her motives. In Sadie’s chapters everything was explained.

Because of such format it was so magnetizing to follow this story.

The main theme of the book is child abuse. The most terrifying thing was that those monsters who abuse children can live near us or within a family and no one will suspect anything just because he “seems” like such a nice person.

“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.”

I liked this quote because it reminded me that we cannot fight for everything and worry about everything. But we need to fight for something that’s important for us. As Sadie, who fought for her little sister and all the other kids who could have been abused.

I hope my review is not too messy. But it is always hard to find the right words for the book that still can’t let me go. It wasn’t the best book I’ve ever read or something I would re-read. Still I really liked it and I want my friends to read it so I can have someone to discuss it with!

Sadie was an amazing roller coaster of action and emotion. The podcast connection felt very current and never forced. It was a great plot device. The true crime aspect will be very appealing to teens. In a market that is flooded with "Gone Girl" type stories, this one is unique. Highly recommended.

Courtney Summers is one of my favorite YA authors, so I couldn't wait to read Sadie. The thing about Sadie is the book is very heavy. Like extremely dark and depressing and very hard to stomach. There are all sorts of triggers and I just felt there was never a glimmer of any hopefulness anywhere in the book. The format also didn't work for me. The podcast chapters were strong and engaging and I almost wished it was told entirely in that way. Sadie's POV sections felt flat in comparison. Although I gave the book 3 stars, I would still recommend it. Just wasn't quite in the mood for a very depressing read.

Review posted on Goodreads and Amazon

This was one of my most anticipated books of 2018 and it didn't disappoint me. First thing that made the book much more interesting is the radio sections. It felt much more realistic. The story captured me immediatelly without really trying hard and i can for sure tell that i will read all the books that she will publish. She has an amazing writing style, which makes thr whole story just fly by. I hope to read all the new books that she will write.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book and chose to review it. This in no way impacts my opinion.

"It'll h-heal f-fine."

"It'll heal ugly."

But most things do.

This was such a unique book, especially with its writing style. I love Courtney Summer's writing style and believe she is one of the most creative authors in the game. Having this set up as a podcast with different perspectives from Sadie was a stylistic choice that wouldn't have worked if it was anyone but Courtney Summers writing it.

I loved seeing how Sadie made connections and went along with her vengeance. I would have liked a bit more at the beginning or in the middle to show how she determined how she knew the answer to the problem because it did seem like she just knew without actually showing us. But I loved watching Sadie figure it out and have West follow in her footsteps. I think it was such a good choice to make.

And West was incredible too. I liked seeing how he didn't necessarily want to write or follow this story but he knew it was important. He also realized it became more important as he went along, which was how I also felt. It was just such a good way to bring the reader into the story and get them to buy into the story.

I really liked the writing style and narrative to this one. I like when books are written in transcripts! But I felt a little underwhelmed at times. I thought there could have been more to some of the interactions than what we got. But overall it is something unique and different! If you’ve liked Courtney Summers previous works, you’ll enjoy this as well.

So, I think this is an extremely creatively written story, going back and forth between Sadie's POV and the podcast. I loved the writing style. But, seeing as it a thriller, there was nothing exceptionally thrilling about the storyline. I mean, I was invested well enough in the story and characters, but nothing really happened that had me sitting at the edge of my seat for much of the time. At first, I was a little frustrated with the ending, but now I do think it works for the story. I really did like it overall, and I do keep thinking about it weeks after I finished. I just think that part of my problem is I just didn't get what I was expecting.

Sadie's sister Mattie was murdered and Sadie sets out to avenge her death. This is a harrowing and powerful story of a broken, grieving girl seeking vengeance for her sister. A reporter catches wind of the story while visiting a local gas station and becomes hesitantly compelled to find her. Wes McCray starts a podcast retracing Sadie's steps but is always a few steps behind. Will they find Sadie or will she be 'just another dead girl?' Riveting until the end. Haunting. I couldn't put it down. I appreciated listening to the podcast when getting to each episode in the book and was disappointed that they didn't carry it through the book's entirety.

This story was brilliantly written! It left you wondering....but amazing sad and heart felt!!! I have personally never lost anyone like that, but if i did I would go through all the great lengths and measures that sadie did!

This book was on my best of 2018 list. I very much liked how well the alternating timelines were handled, the voice was excellent, and it was incredibly gripping.
Reviewed in full in this video: http://www.thebookrat.com/2018/09/three-recent-book-loves-sadie-dance-of.html

This book is incredible. It is quite powerful and will make a great addition to classrooms. I will be adopting it for my college-level course of preservice teachers in the Fall.

Loved this novel, kept me on my toes and definitely pulled me in right from the start. I don’t know what I would do if my sister went missing. Probably anything that I could like this story follows.