The book's name was derived from "Sadieville", the title of a song by South Carolina singer-songwriter Jennifer Goree that was released on Dont Be a Stranger, her 1998 album with Appalachian Soul.

[8] de Lint stated, "I can't think of any other writer who has created a body of work that merges mythic matter, the rural experience, and the modern world as successfully as Bledsoe has with this bittersweet series.

In a review in Lightspeed magazine, she found Justin's interaction as a black man with white Southerners interesting, and noted Bledsoe's acknowledgement of African-American roots in bluegrass.

[9] A review of The Fairies of Sadieville in Publishers Weekly stated that, as in the previous Tufa books, "Bledsoe infuses his setting with a rich sense of location, atmosphere, and history".

[10] Liz Bourke wrote in a review at Tor.com that while Bledsoe's text "is [always] carefully precise", "elegantly measured" and "a delight to read", she felt that The Fairies of Sadieville is "more scattered and less unified" than the previous books in the series.

[11] Bourke opined that the book is "lacking ... depth", and that "[i]ts strands are woven together without the deftness of connection ... [needed] ... to support each other for the maximum tension or strength of feeling.