3 star, YA

Review: Sadie by Courtney Summers

Andge @ Down the Rabbit Hole

A missing girl on a journey of revenge. A Serial―like podcast following the clues she’s left behind. And an ending you won’t be able to stop talking about.

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.

Courtney Summers has written the breakout book of her career. Sadie is propulsive and harrowing and will keep you riveted until the last page.

TW: sexual abuse

Dark and heartwrenching at times, Sadie by now is a fairly common household name among YA readers and even beyond. But as a thriller? I’m not so sure it held that level of suspense, but there was definitely a mysterious allure to understand what happened to the titular character, Sadie.

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discussion

Let’s Talk Bookish – Do you run a booktube? Why or why not?

Fives @ Down The Rabbit Hole

Welcome to the another LTB in March, everyone! This is a weekly meme hosted by Rukky and Dani on their respective blogs, where we take community suggested topics about books/reading and discuss them and share our views!

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme, hosted by Rukky @ Eternity Books & Dani @ Literary Lion, where they discuss certain topics, share their opinions, and spread the love by visiting each others’ posts.

Prompt for March 12 (suggested by Dani):
I recently started a booktube, as I’ve been longing to for ages and it made me think – if you blog and booktube why do you do both? If you only blog why have you chosen blogging over booktubing? Do you think one format does certain things better than the other? Do you ever want to run a booktube if you don’t already?

Such an interesting prompt for today! I have never been much of a video editor, nor do I really like recording them, so booktubing has never really been in the cards for me. Editing blog posts just feels much more natural to me, having have finished drafts of posts, and working at my own pace just feels simpler on a blog.

I myself have never been really that brave to even start a blog, it is really only by joining Andge here that I truly got into blogging about three years ago. I must say I have massively enjoyed the experience so far, and am glad to have taken it up. For me personally, these kinds of things are more fun with a friend, or at least not alone, and in that sense it is probably easier for us to coordinate blog posts over coordinating videos.

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2.5 star, adult

Review: Chemistry by Weike Wang

Fives @ Down The Rabbit Hole

At first glance, the quirky, overworked narrator [of this] novel seems to be on the cusp of a perfect life: she is studying for a prestigious PhD in chemistry that will make her Chinese parents proud (or at least satisfied), and her successful, supportive boyfriend has just proposed to her. But instead of feeling hopeful, she is wracked with ambivalence: the long demanding hours at the lab have created an exquisite pressure cooker, and she doesn’t know how to answer the marriage question. When is all becomes too much and her life plan veers off course, she finds herself on a new path of discoveries about everything she thought she knew.

I wish I could have given this a better rating – I really wish I liked it more. Overall, I didn’t have the best time reading it, but there were definitely redeemable elements that make me appreciate it. This short novel is also written in a very interesting way, which I found to be unique, but not altogether my preferred style.

Chemistry revolves around a nameless narrator, and we follow her trains of thought as she navigates her PhD in chemistry and possible upcoming nuptials. She has a Chinese background and the ever so prevalent Asian Parents. As she continues to endure more of the pressure from all angles, how will she survive, and what will happen to her?

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