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MY EXPERIENCE WITH THIS BOOK:

I gobbled this audiobook up in one day. The entire thing was brilliant. Bloody Brilliant. The voice acting is what took it from 4 stars to 5. It truly felt like I was witnessing everything unfold. It was beautifully worded and should never read this: unless it's in audiobook form!

CHARACTERS/DY­NAMICS:

Sadie: I kid you not, after listening to this podcast, I kept stuttering over my words. I appreciate the unique and largely under-discussed disability: speech impediments. This was perfectly powerful in this novel. Sadie, overall, was flawless. What a beautiful human. I truly hope she is alive. This story is too ambiguous to truly tell us.

Mattie: Congrats, Mattie. You win the Worst Sibling or Family Member Ever Award. I get Sadie is being selfish, wanting somebody to worship her, but Sadie's acts for Mattie were anything but selfish. Mattie acts 1000× more irrational than Sadie, even when Sadie was half Mattie's age. I think there's a fault at crediting Mattie as “just a kid.” That reduces pre-teens/pre-adults as these part-human things. Not fully human, but almost developed to reach the label. Mattie was 13, god damn it. She was her own person, not some uncontrollable beast that had no conscious. She had more education than Sadie, yet continued to be so… Stupid. So blind. Perhaps it's willfully blind- Who knows. Mattie is not worth the love that Sadie devoted upon her.

Claire: I was expecting Claire to end up being the killer.

Maybeth: What a great surrogate grandmother. I absolutely love that Summers' created one too– my family is the only time I've ever been exposed to “surrogate grandmothers”. I wish Maybeth wasn't religious, but this is sticking true to the stereotype of Southern trailer trash.

Podcast Guy, West: what a lil bitch at the beginning, aye- He gets better. I appreciate how self aware he is, and how often he self-reflects. He asked great questions and didn't dumb down the investigation.

Darren/Christop­her/Keith/Jac­k: I wish he had a crueller death, that SOB.

All the friends Sadie made along the way: Harvey, Kerri, Kat… They were amazing characters. I wish we could have an alternate universe where Sadi, Harvey, Kerri and Kat go to high school. That'd be amazing.

PLOT:

I was swept up in all of it. It was not as mysterious or plot twisting as I expected it to be, but I loved her quest and adventure. Who she met. Who she confronted. So powerful.

STRUCTURE:

The structure flips between Sadie's perspective (in the past), and the podcast, The Girls (set in present time).

THEMES:

• Pedophilia.
• Graphic violence and swearing.
• Blood.
• Angst.
• Revenge.
• Sisterhood.
• Substance abuse.

THE ENDING:

I was expecting a few more plot twists, but nothing came. That's okay. My expectations were set to Monday's Not Coming's level. Where the mum was the killer, and that our narrator was actually in some psych-stand still, reliving her search for her dead best friend.

IMPACT: This book leads me questioning:

1. Is Sadie dead-
2. Will the podcast continue with a season 2, with another load of dead girls-
3. What happened in the forest-
4. Why would Keith kill Mattie- Why-
5. Did Keith kill any of the other girls-