content warnings: sexual assault against minors, violence, murder, parental abuse, drug addiction,
representation: bisexual protagonist with a stutter

God, I really loved this book. Despite its difficult subject matter, I found it so incredibly easy to binge and read it all in two days. The audiobook, as you've likely heard, is phenomenal, especially in the sections where the book is being told from the perspective of the true crime podcast. I think that if I were reading this physically it would have taken me a lot longer to read. 

I've seen that the ending is a bit controversial and I definitely understand why. I can't imagine Courtney Summers wrote the ending that she did without expecting people to not like it. But I absolutely loved it. To me, it was the only way that this book could end without betraying itself. 

This book is also very unintentionally poignant currently. There's a moment when the host of the podcast is talking with Sadie's mother and says that his reason for caring so much about this case is that he has a young daughter, to which Sadie's mother tells him he shouldn't need daughters in order to care. Considering what Scotty from Marketing said fairly recently, this moment really enraged me in a very good way. This book also doesn't shy away from how inherently exploitative true crime podcasts are, no matter how respectful they say they are.