Reviews with content warning for Emotional abuse - Sadie

This is one of two books I have ever felt the compulsion to write a review of. The content warnings for this book are incredibly extensive, the most prevalent of which being the sexual assault of minors. I have never before read a book that truly, deeply disturbed me. I have read psychological thrillers that made me paranoid, but I have never been unsettled in the same way I was when I read this book. Not much bothers me. This book bothered me. I will admit that this issue is partially my fault for not doing proper research into how extensive this discussion of sexual assault was. Regardless of whether I was aware of how much this was explored in Sadie, I felt that it was incredibly excessive. I have read books that handle assault in a beautiful way while not forcing it down the reader's throat. This was not the case with Saide. There is a very fine line, in my opinion, between trauma for character/plot development's sake and trauma for trauma's sake. This book pole-vaulted over that line. While I understand that the things displayed in this book are a reality for some, I thought the way in which they were presented was incredibly poorly handled. While reading, I got the feeling that the author was not interested in giving their character depth, but instead in writing about the sexual assault of children because they wanted to. Let me make myself clear. I am NOT calling the author a pedophile. I am simply saying they seemed to be fixated on the idea of bringing up these elements at every turn regardless of whether it was necessary or beneficial to the story. They seem to be screaming "This book is dark! I promise!" with each available opportunity. An example of this is in the

last half of the book where Saide realizes a character who was quite literally just introduced is sexually abusing his Tball players. This revelation does not provide any character development nor does it help move the story along. It is only referenced once more in the book and even then, all that is said is that it happened. Why include that detail if it seems to serve no purpose?

In addition to the overzealous attempt at a traumatic backstory, I found the main character, Sadie, to be just as artificial. I think now is a good time to mention that I have never personally been in any situation akin to what she experienced in this book, so take what I am saying with a grain of salt. However, Saide seemed like a middle-aged man's interpretation of an antisocial teenage girl. While it would be entirely appropriate and expected for her to be detached and somber, she seemed comically moody and jaded. To me, she came across as a caricature of what she should have been. She was insufferable and I was counting the pages until I didn't have to listen to her anymore.
Despite these repulsive aspects of the book, there were some ideas I did appreciate. In the synopsis of the book which The StoryGraph has provided, they explain that this book alternates chapters between Sadie's point of view and the podcaster's. I always enjoy it when authors experiment with the format of a "traditional" book to bring something new to the table and I thought the podcast transcripts were creative enough to be refreshing while also being orthodox enough to not be jarring. This brings me to the second thing about this book I enjoyed. I listened to portions of this book as an audiobook as well as read it in a physical form. The podcast chapters were well executed on the audiobook and if I wasn't aware I was listening to a book, I could have thought it truly was a podcast. I would highly recommend both reading physically and listening to the podcast chapters (although that is not necessary for the Saide chapters). Unfortunately, that is where my praise ends.
Overall, the idea for this book was commendable, but the execution was not. I personally am a big fan of psychological thrillers as well as murder mystery books, but this book was not thrilling enough to be a thriller nor mysterious enough to be a mystery. It simply fell short in every category.

Content Warnings

aideenisareader's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

i loved this book please read it now. one of only books where i was completely satisfied with the ending even though i hated what happened to the characters.

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tahmida's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I listened to this as an audiobook because many people were recommending to do so and my god, it was absolutely brilliant. There's a whole cast, a different voice for different characters, which is one of the things I loved. I haven't read many thriller/mystery novels, and this definitely was a break from what I usually read. Regardless, I think I have found one of my new favourite books of all time. I adored the main protagonist, Sadie. The way the story is unravelled and told has such a strong grasp on me. The dual POV of the podcast and Sadie was very well-established through the audiobook; if you want to read this book, I highly recommend listening to it as an audiobook. Please do check the content and trigger warnings before you read this book.

The ending left me absolutely numb. I was so invested in Sadie's story. When I realised there were no more Sadie POVs left and that the book was slowly coming to the end, I was dreading what would happen to her. After the audiobook was done, I sat there for a good 15 minutes trying to process everything and then I immediately jumped on the internet to see the theories and if there was a proper ending. I ranted to my clueless friend for another 10 minutes about the ending and the book as a whole. I needed the closure so bad.

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ivybean's review against another edition

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wickedgrumpy's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I listened to the audiobook and it was really well done, though thrillers aren't really my thing.

It was slow for me to get into since the switching between POVs was kind of jarring but as I progressed and got used to the style the pacing picked up quite a bit.

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hakeema17h's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

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lisa_m's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional inspiring sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated

3.0

⚠️❗Trigger Warning: child abuse, rape, molestation, pedophilia, death, depression, drug abuse and murder❗⚠️

This book was quite a ride and also quite out of my comfortzone. That is also the reason why you shouldn't let my review of only 3⭐ make you not want to read the book.

It is incredibly written and I can absolutely appreciate it for what it is. The representation of stuttering (which I have never ever read in a book before!) was something you have to get used to but its definitely worth it.

What made it hard for me to get through was mainly the themes of the book. I have put the Trigger Warnings on top and as you can see there's a lot of them. All of those topics are definitely issues that have to be adressed. I read the book knowing it was going to be hard to get through but I did it and I'm glad I did. The book never made me feel like it was exploiting Sadies experiences and memories. She had flashbacks and she described what she experienced but it was never in extreme detail.
I'm not a fan of horror/gore/thrillers and the book isn't that at all. It's a YA-contemporary mystery with very heavy topics. If you feel like you are able to read it, I would definitely recommend it. It made me think a lot for sure.

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lubsyreads's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced

4.0

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