Book Blog #284: Sadie by Courtney Summers

 

Title: Sadie

Author: Courtney Summers

# of Pages: 7 hours, 57 minutes (audiobook)

Genre: YA, Mystery, Contemporary

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Synopsis: 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.

Review: This book is somewhere between 3 and 4 stars.

This is the first time I've listened to an audiobook all the way through. Since I read in the synopsis that part of the book was told as a podcast, I thought it would be a good book to listen to. This wasn't entirely true; the podcast sections WERE nice to listen to in audio format and hear the different voices from their 30 person cast. However, with all the switching back and forth between time (e.g. flashbacks, between radio personality West McCray following Sadie's tracks vs hearing from Sadie in the moment when she was making said tracks) was confusing in audiobook format. There were also a lot of characters and names to keep track of that I found harder to do than if I were to read the book, but this might be my own fault rather than the fault of the book. 

On one hand this book was definitely not as good as other YA contemporary books I have read. I am not sure if it's because I didn't care for the voice actor/her rendition of Sadie's voice, but I found Sadie mildly annoying. Her internal tough girl narrative rubbed me the wrong way, or perhaps it didn't feel realistic to me. The fact that Sadie has a stutter was an interesting characteristic, although I would like to know the reasoning behind why Summers decided to include this. 

Of course, there is POV switching between West McCray and Sadie. This always bugs me, although in this case I think this is what made me so interested in the story, the reason why I also gave this book 4 stars. Since the search for Sadie and the telling of the story from Sadie's perspective are running in near parallel, the plot is constantly pushing toward uncovering the mystery of what happened to Sadie and Mattie. Without West McCray's narrative, the story would be too mundane; without Sadie's narrative the reader would not get any relief on knowing the truth of what actually happened. 

I would recommend this book, although I'm not sure if I would recommend listening to it over reading it. It was a quick listen for me, and it was nice to be able to take walks/do chores while listening to a story. 

Book Blog #283: Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

 

Title: Little Fires Everywhere

Author: Celeste Ng

# of Pages: 338 (ebook)

Genre: Adult, Contemporary 

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Synopsis: In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned--from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules. Enter Mia Warren--an enigmatic artist and single mother--who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community. When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town--and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia's past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs.

Review: "But the problem with rules, he reflected, was that they implied a right way and a wrong way to do things. When, in fact, most of the time there were simply ways, none of them quite wrong or quite right, and nothing to tell you for sure which side of the line you stood on." -p.269

Ever since it won a Goodreads Choice Award back in 2017, I've been meaning to read this book. I finally got my hands on a copy, but I don't think it was exactly worth the wait. 

Little Fires Everywhere is DEFINITELY a contemporary book. The story ultimately compares and contrasts the lives of the rich and the poor, exposing how even in the most peaceful and planned suburbia, life isn't always as perfect as its residents make it seem. 

My main takeaways are that a "fair" system isn't always fair in reality to marginalized groups, relationships (between lovers, parent and child, etc.) can be complex, and people are not always as they seem (e.g. rich people are fake nice). Although these are interesting topics, the book was incredibly slow moving, very much a slice-of-life type. What made this book lose two stars was how predictable everything was. The plot dragged to get to a revelation that the reader had many pages back, which made me struggle to finish the book. It seemed to me that Ng concentrated more on crafting her characters' inner thoughts almost poetically than telling an engaging story. While some people might love this, it's just not the style for me. 

Overall an okay book. I would tentatively recommend this book, but it was definitely not one of my favorites.