We Were Liars
E. Lockhart
Like Sadie, it builds toward a late reveal that recasts everything before it. Its narrator's unreliable memories and tight focus on one family's secret keep the pages turning in the same way.
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Find Similar BooksSadie
Young Adult
★★★★★4.5 (2)
A furious, heartbreaking thriller that pairs a runaway girl's raw first-person hunt for her sister's killer with a true-crime podcast trying to piece her trail together.
What It's About
Sadie Hunter is nineteen, raised in a trailer in a dying Colorado town, and has spent most of her life acting as mother to her younger sister, Mattie. When Mattie is murdered and the case goes cold, Sadie disappears with a switchblade and a short list of leads, intent on finding the man responsible. Months later, radio host West McCray starts investigating her disappearance for a serialized podcast, following the breadcrumbs she left across small towns and run-down motels.
The book alternates between these two tracks. Sadie's chapters are tense, intimate and often painful; she has a stutter, distrusts nearly everyone, and her narration is clipped and determined. West's chapters are written as podcast transcripts, with interviews, host commentary and episode framing, so you watch an outsider slowly realize how badly the adults in Sadie's life failed her. The gap between what Sadie knows and what West can reconstruct creates much of the suspense.
Reading it is gripping but heavy. Summers does not soften the subject matter, which includes child sexual abuse, addiction and neglect, though she avoids lingering on graphic detail. It reads quickly, like a road-trip thriller, yet it leaves you thinking about how society treats missing poor girls and how true crime packages real suffering as entertainment. Many readers recommend the full-cast audiobook, which leans into the podcast format.
Read this if you…
- love dark, propulsive thrillers with an unforgettable, prickly narrator
- enjoy true-crime podcasts and want a story that questions them as well as imitates them
- want young adult fiction that treats serious subject matter without talking down to readers
Skip it if you…
- need to avoid stories centered on child sexual abuse, addiction or the murder of a child
- want a neat mystery with every thread tied up by the final page
Key Ideas
- 1
Girls who go missing unnoticed
The novel keeps returning to the idea that some disappearances barely register. Sadie is poor, angry and from a family with a bad reputation, so few people look hard for her. Through West's growing guilt and the indifference of many people he interviews, the book questions whose lives get attention and why certain victims are dismissed before anyone asks what happened to them.
- 2
A sister's love as fuel
Sadie raised Mattie almost single-handedly after their mother checked out, and that bond drives everything she does. Her quest is less about justice in the abstract than about the unbearable fact that she couldn't protect the person she lived for. The book treats this love as both her strength and the thing pushing her toward real danger.
- 3
True crime under the microscope
Framing half the story as a Serial-style podcast lets Summers examine the genre itself. West is sympathetic, but he is also building a hit show from a family's tragedy. The transcripts capture the format's pull and its ethical discomfort, inviting readers to notice their own appetite for other people's pain.
- 4
Two voices, one widening gap
The structure is the book's distinctive engine. Sadie's chapters are immediate and present-tense; the podcast is retrospective and pieced together from witnesses. You often know more than West, which creates dread rather than mystery, and the contrast between her lived experience and how others describe her is quietly devastating.
- 5
Abuse and the cycles around it
Without being graphic, the novel confronts how predators exploit vulnerable families and how silence, shame and adult neglect let harm repeat. It is a central thread, not a backdrop, and it is handled with anger and seriousness rather than sensationalism, which is why many readers find the book stays with them.
Limitations
The book is relentlessly bleak, and some readers find the misery unrelenting with little light to balance it. The podcast sections occasionally feel more like a novelist's version of a transcript than a real show, and West is less vividly drawn than Sadie. The ending is deliberately divisive; readers who want firm resolution often come away frustrated. Its YA label can mislead, since the content is mature enough that many adults consider it closer to adult crime fiction. It also focuses tightly on Sadie's story rather than broader systemic analysis.
Questions Readers Ask
- Is Sadie appropriate for teenagers?
- It is marketed as young adult and is widely read by older teens, typically fourteen and up. However, it deals directly with child sexual abuse, a child's murder, addiction and neglect. Nothing is described in lurid detail, but the themes are intense, so younger or sensitive readers may want to check content warnings first.
- Should I read Sadie or listen to the audiobook?
- Both work, but the audiobook is often singled out as exceptional. It uses a full cast and presents the podcast sections like an actual show, which makes the dual structure feel natural. The print version lets you see the transcript formatting and may make Sadie's stutter easier to follow on the page.
- How does Sadie compare to other YA thrillers like A Good Girl's Guide to Murder?
- Both use investigative and podcast elements, but A Good Girl's Guide to Murder is a lighter, puzzle-driven whodunit with a teen sleuth. Sadie is much darker and more emotional, focused on grief, trauma and survival rather than clue-solving. If you want fun mystery, choose Holly Jackson; if you want something harrowing, choose Summers.
What Creators Say About Sadie
Reviews from readers on YouTube. Their opinions are their own.
- Published
- 2018
- ISBN
- 9781250105721
- Difficulty
- beginner
- Category
- Young Adult
Book details and cover from Google Books.
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A high-school mystery with multiple narrators and a clear, escalating puzzle. Readers who enjoyed the alternating perspectives and clues in Sadie will find the same satisfaction in tracking who knows what.
Sharp Objects
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An adult thriller with a damaged, unflinching protagonist returning to a small town to investigate violence against girls. Its dark, tense atmosphere will appeal to anyone drawn to Sadie's bleak small-town setting.
All the Bright Places
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Two teenagers navigate grief, trauma and a fragile sense of self over one intense stretch of time. Its emotional honesty about loss mirrors the wounded interiority that drives Sadie's journey.