Rebecca Soler

Book Review: Sadie (re-read)

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Sadie
by Courtney Summers
read by Rebecca Soler, Dan Bittner, Fred Berman, & Gabra Zackman

My rating: 4.5 / 5
Genre: YA suspense, drama

See original review here.

I don’t normally write a new review when I read a book I already reviewed on my blog. But this is a special case. The first time I read this book, 5 1/2 years ago, I still gave it 4 stars, but I had some issues with the audiobook. I couldn’t handle listening to Sadie’s parts for 2 main reasons. The first is that there was a lot of language, and though it doesn’t generally stop me from reading books, it bothered me more to keep hearing it out loud. But I also struggled with feeling like the narrator made Sadie sound angry all the time, even when giving the description of a room she’d entered or something. So I switched to a format where I read Sadie’s portions myself and listened to the “podcast” parts. Recently, I listened to a couple of audiobooks by the same narrator, and I quite liked her. So when I realized it was the same narrator, I wanted to give it another try.

I can honestly say that I don’t know what my issue with the “angry” narrator was those 5+ years ago. I think that the fact that I had barely listened to any audiobooks back then, but now I have extensive experience with them probably has a lot to do with it (I still cringed when there was a lot of cussing though, especially dialog with many f-words). The story is still dark and gritty with subject matter that means I couldn’t really recommend this YA book for anyone younger than 16 (see content warnings in my original review at the link above), but it’s compelling and engaging.

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If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!

Book Review: Scarlet

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Scarlet
The Lunar Chronicles #2
by Marissa Meyer
read by Rebecca Soler

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: YA sci-fi

Spoiler notice: The following review will contain some spoilers for the previous book in the series, Cinder.

Scarlet’s grandmother is missing, but the police don’t seem to care. She starts following clues to track her down on her own, somewhat reluctantly accepting the aid of a mysterious street fighter called Wolf. Meanwhile, Cinder has to escape from prison and figure out where to go next on her quest to understand her identity.

I didn’t love this book as much as the previous, but I did still enjoy it a lot. I think the main difference here is that there was a lot of focus on the building relationship between Scarlet and Wolf, and I just wasn’t really feeling it. On the plus side, though, since we have a new main character in this book, I was glad that Scarlet is different enough in her personality compared to Cinder that I didn’t feel like it was a repeat of Cinder and I didn’t have a hard time keeping the two characters separate in my mind when Cinder had her own POV scenes throughout this book. Scarlet is quick-tempered and stubborn, though maybe her personality is part of why I had a difficult time buying her growing relationship with Wolf.

Scarlet’s search for her grandmother was broken up by Cinder’s continuing story and, less often, Emperor Kai trying to prevent war with Queen Levana. My favorite thing about this book came in the form of a new side character—Thorne. Though he’s quite inappropriate at times, he’s a great comic relief. The overall advancement of plot in this book kept me invested, and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes from here.

I listened to the audiobook, and the narrator did a great job with the different characters, though she seemed to drop Scarlet’s slight accent now and then. I still recommend this book (though definitely start with Cinder; these are not stand-alone books) to fans of futuristic sci-fi and/or fairy tale retellings, maybe around age 15 and up (there was more in the way of physical interaction in this book than the previous, though it was still pretty clean overall).

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If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!

Book Review: Cinder

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Cinder
The Lunar Chronicles #1
by Marissa Meyer
read by Rebecca Soler

My rating: 5 / 5
Genre: YA sci-fi

As a cyborg, Cinder and her kind are considered second-class citizens, so much so that cyborgs are chosen at random to be test subjects for possible cures to the plague that has been threatening New Beijing and the surrounding country. But when the nation’s prince brings Cinder, a gifted mechanic, an android to fix and then Cinder’s step-sister falls sick with the plague, events lead to a more dangerous adventure than Cinder ever could have anticipated. And her mysterious past will prove to be more of a liability than she ever knew.

There’s so much going on in this book, and while sometimes that can be bad in a book, it all worked together here. It’s no secret that this is a Cinderella retelling, but really, that’s just a small part of it (though it still made me think of Ever After a lot while I was reading). It’s a starting point and a vehicle for part of the plot, but the bulk of the story revolves around secrets that Cinder begins to learn throughout the story. I enjoyed the unfolding of all of these secrets and the connections that were made between seemingly separate subplots. There were several side characters that I also really enjoyed, including an android sidekick with a particularly perky personality chip.

There were a couple of revelations in this book that I predicted, at least one pretty early on, but I don’t think much of it was meant to be a huge twist or anything. I would have been pretty surprised and even a little disappointed if I’d turned out to be wrong. At the end of the book, I was surprised when the story ended on a cliffhanger. I’m not usually a fan, but I think I’m starting to realize that how much it bothers me depends a lot on how much I enjoyed the book up to that point (which makes a lot of sense, really). So though it felt abrupt, I’m pretty invested and am definitely happy to continue the series.

I listened to the audiobook, and the narrator did a great job with the different characters, including a couple of accents. My 15-year-old daughter has read most of this series and loves it so much that she kept wanting me to listen to the book when she could be around and listen with me. That’s an endorsement in itself, but I also recommend this to fans of futuristic sci-fi and/or fairy tale retellings around age 14 and up—it’s quite clean in all respects, which isn’t too common for YA these days.

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If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!

Book Review: Sadie

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Sadie
by Courtney Summers
read by Rebecca Soler, Dan Bittner, Fred Berman, & Gabra Zackman

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: YA suspense, drama

Sadie’s life was already an unhappy one, her main bright spot being her little sister Mattie, whom she practically raised. But then Mattie dies, and some time later, Sadie decides to do what the police can’t—track down Mattie’s killer. This leads Sadie on a road trip to find the man she knows is responsible. Three months later, a radio personality is asked by Sadie’s surrogate grandmother to find the missing Sadie. He follows her trail and turns the investigation into a podcast.

It was really difficult to rate this book in the end, because it was dark and disturbing, but also unique and interesting. Sadie’s perspective is shown in first-person, present tense as she travels from town to town looking for her sister’s killer. The podcast is shown in a script format—West McCray (the radio personality) explaining to us what he finds, and also interviewing people along the way.

Before I get any further with my review, I feel a content warning is in order. There are certain things that are treated very carefully—pedophilia, drug abuse, and murder. There is also a lot of language. I started out listening to the audiobook, because it was highly recommended, given that the podcast sections are presented like a real podcast. However, I had to switch to a format where I read Sadie’s portions myself and listened to the “podcast” parts, because Sadie’s portions are so heavy with language, I couldn’t stand listening to it. I can handle it in text better, because apparently I tend to mentally bleep out those words. But I also didn’t care for the person who read Sadie’s part, because she sounded angry all the time, no matter what she said. Simply describing a room, she was angry. It was a bit much. So the joint format worked well for me.

One of my favorite things about the book, which I started out thinking would make it boring or repetitive, was McCray’s follow-up on things we’d already seen Sadie do. Because he trailed her 3 months later, we were able to see the aftermath of some of her actions. And the way McCray got caught up in her story added a comforting human element the rest of the story seemed to be lacking—not because other characters were heartless or didn’t care, but because the circumstances just didn’t lend to them being very kind, compassionate, etc.

The book being YA leads me to warn that if you’re thinking of allowing your teenager to read it, read it first. The language alone may put off a lot of people. However, I do think the book is worth reading—I just know I wouldn’t let my daughter read it as a teenager.

Find out more about Sadie

See what I’m reading next.

If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!