I had high expectations when I originally got this book, especially since it was being sold as the spiritual successor to Sadie, a book that I loved dearly. When some reviews from my friends started coming out, my excitement lowered, since the reviews weren’t all positive (and these friends loved Sadie as much as I did). I still wanted to give the book a shot, though, and see if it would still at least hit in some ways, even if differently from Summers’ other books.

This was, sort of true? Overall, I can’t say I really liked this book, and it wasn’t memorable in any good way, but I also didn’t entirely dislike my time with it. There were moments where I felt like I could see what Summers was trying to do, even if it wasn’t always entirely clear. I’m still left disappointed, due to the original high hopes I had, but this book did still make me think.

One of my biggest issues may have been how horrible everything was. In this way, it hit similar notes to Sadie, where there’s just this deep well of the vileness of humanity, and we see how it’s been put on a teenage girl. However, even with Sadie, it felt like there was enough light and hope to feel like the story and Sadie’s efforts mattered, despite all the pain. Georgia’s story here didn’t really feel like it ever had that light, that reason to keep going. Everything sucked and it kept on sucking. The abrupt ending also left us without any actual satisfaction this time around, in my opinion, and it just left me wondering what it was all for. In that way, this story may be more realistic than Sadie’s, but it also felt way more hopeless.

I also just didn’t like Georgia as much as a narrator. I completely understand she’s a teenage girl, and that she’ll make mistakes and decisions that don’t necessarily make sense logically. But at the same time, she never seemed to learn or grow from them either. Her view of the world and her supposed role in it has been very skewed by the people around her, but we never really see the mindset/view combatted, and she never seems to actually escape it. There’s not enough in the narrative to show that her thoughts about herself and her relationships (especially with men) were harmful, and it also didn’t feel like she really learned that herself either.

This book was also different from advertised in another way. The synopsis played up this mystery being solved, maybe to make Georgia’s story more similar to Sadie’s, but it really was just a background piece. It was more a reason for Georgia to hang out with a side character than anything else, and sort of just came up whenever it was needed to move other parts of the story along, instead of feeling like a full part of the story on its own.

I also felt like the story itself was often a bit jumbled, especially in the beginning. This was largely due to how the story was being told and how the different pieces were being introduced, but it made it harder than it needed to be to get a real grasp on the story and the characters. While it resolved itself later on, and become less and less confusing as we got a clearer picture of the timeline, it once again felt like a way to try to emulate Sadie, without actually fitting Georgia’s story.

Overall, I’m The Girl probably won’t stick with me like Sadie did, and the impression I have of it currently is still just, generally disappointing. I do think there were some good pieces here, but it regularly felt jumbled up, often when this story was trying to act too much like Sadie, even when it didn’t make sense. I will still try out future books by Summers, but this one just wasn’t for me!