Still Missing
by Chevy Stevens
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Book Reviews of Still Missing
Book Review: hell and what comes after
Summary: 5 Stars
If you want to know what it's like to spend a year in hell, skip the fire & brimstone sermons and read the first 200 pages of Still Missing. Annie O'Sullivan's captivity in the hermetically sealed mountain cabin of a deranged psychopath she calls The Freak is one of the most harrowing reads I've ever experienced. Chevy Smith goes into excruciating detail on her character's abduction, sexual violation, and "punishment" for breaking ironclad rules like when and how often to go to the bathroom. it's the kind of continuous torture that makes you wish you could die, but that's one thing her kick-ass heroine almost never thinks of doing. She finds ingenious ways to outwit her captor/torturer, but breaks down when she has his baby and he allows the baby to die because he hates doctors. Dust jacket blurbs often use "heart pounding suspense" as a metaphor. Here it's literal. You keep wanting Annie to find some way to escape as her torture becomes more unbearable and escape looks more hopeless.
The 2'nd 150 pages is almost like a different book. It does describe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in moving detail, and Stevens gets her psychology right. But in the second part she decides she needs to have a second plot as a conventional thriller, and she piles on the twists and turns and false leads with varying degrees of success. You feel her being manipulative, but the formulaic thriller elements are relieved by focusing on Annie's continuing struggle to come back to life after spiritual and psychological death.
Still Missing is a great book, even if flawed like most other great books. It's a first novel any of us would sell our souls to have written.
Book Review: Intense and original
Summary: 5 Stars
A story about a woman who is abducted and taken to a house where she is abused in many horrifying ways can really be a toss-up. There would have been so many ways to let the horrors of the story take over and make it unreadable or to get caught up in the drama and have it be just a predictable abduction story. Luckily, none of that happened here.
Chevy Stevens crafted a heartbreaking and unique story that horrified but also had me laughing out loud. I could not put this book down. The entire story takes place in the therapy sessions Annie goes through, so we know she got away from her abductor, but that fact doesn't take away from the suspense of the story, it may, in fact, add to it because more questions arise as she tells her therapist more and more.
Although Annie is obviously disturbed and embraces her self-proclaimed bitchiness, I love her! I could hear her voice and feel her personality lifting off the page during every therapy session. She rants about what happened to her while she was captive as well as the present day events taking place between the therapy sessions. She was so real to me as I read the story.
I will warn you that this isn't a story for the faint of heart. Stevens goes into details of Annie's abduction that are difficult to read but not overdone, making it more readable, while also more real (which is both good and bad in this situation). All of the difficult reading is worth it in the end because it makes for an incredible story that comes to life with the pain, sorrow, joy, confusion, anger, and intensity that you would expect from this type of an event. Still Missing is an extremely powerful book.
Book Review: Excellent
Summary: 4 Stars
Synopsis: 32-year-old Realtor Annie O' Sullivan just wanted to sell the house she was showing and perhaps have a nice dinner with her boyfriend when she was finished. That was before the last visitor at the open house arrived and changed Annie's life forever. Kidnapped by a man in a van, Annie is held prisoner for a year by a psycopath.
Annie recounts her tale during a series of therapy sessions, mingling the horrifying year of captivity, with her less-than pleasant present. Annie first struggles for her freedom and then struggles with the things she had to do to regain her freedom. And while Annie struggles with reintegrating with the world she was pulled out of, the police struggle to identify the man who held her prisoner.
Review: Kudos to Chevy Stevens. Still Missing is an amazing, well-written debut novel by Stevens. I was extremely intrigued by the construct of the narrative. I don't believe I have ever read a novel that is told through sessions with a therapist. Very unique.
Annie was a strong protagonist that the reader wanted to root for. Her narrative was bold and authentic. She spared no details of the pain and humiliation she suffered at the hands of her captor. But Annie told her tale with the voice of a survivor, not a victim, and that is how I was pulled into the story.
The mystery element to the novel - who was her captor? how did he pick Annie and why? - was equally compelling and surprising.
Overall, I couldn't put this novel down, literally. I read it in one sitting (about 6 hours) because I was so completely into the story. Definitely one of my top picks of 2010!
Book Review: Page Turning With Disapointing Ending
Summary: 3 Stars
I agree with most of the comments here - the book is a page turner that hooks you quickly with the jacket description and leads you along a terrifying and suspense filled journey. The book starts promising enough - told through therapy session flashbacks - Annie describes her year in captivity and her life since.
The writing is pretty simplistic which isn't always a bad thing. Sometimes you don't need elaborate paragraphs to get your point across. The way it's written though makes Annie come across much younger than her thirty-plus years (if I remember correctly - she's 32). At times, the way she talks sounds like a bitter teenager. If it weren't for the graphic portions and storyline of the novel you might even assume this was young adult fiction.
I loved the first half of the book - Annie's account of being kidnapped and learning to survive - is heart wrenching. It's easy to see the strength in her that she no longer believes she has. And even though you know somehow she's gotten away you are left looking for clues on how she escaped and why she was taken. And then like most books about halfway through Stevens starts to loose steam. The plot twist is thrown in and I think the book is at that point thrown off course. To me it no longer became believable and turned more into a soap opera/TV movie. I won't give anything away but the plot twist is very disappointing and could have been differently.
Since I don't necessarily think this is a book you would want to read over and over - I'd have to say you're money is probably better spent elsewhere and to check it out at the library (sorry Amazon).
Book Review: Still Missing is missing something
Summary: 3 Stars
A very avid reader, every month I try and find a debut novelist and spend money on a hardcover book in support of authors and the publishing industry. This month, I chose debut novelist Chevy Stevens. The book is very well written, it is the story that lags in suspense. Others have written on the plot, so I will focus on what I liked and did not like about this book:
Like:
The story line is well conceived
The narrative is mostly explored through the eyes of the victim as she talks to her psychiatrist, an interesting concept
The book is well written and edited (something I find missing in a lot of today's superstar authors who rush to print each year).
Did not like:
About half way through the book, I am wondering "is this it" as the story becomes mired in the circumstances of the victim's kidnapping. The suspense was gone and I found that that I didn't really care "who did it or why" as I was able to put the book down a number of times without regret.
(Spoiler) There is a gratutious sex scene in the book. I don't mind a good sex scene, but not directly after reading repeated vicious events of repeated rape of the same women.
The "who did it and why" ending was an odd, almost forced conclusion. Few pages were doveted to the "who and why" and maybe that is why I felt the ending was forced and did not arise naturally from the other events of the book.
I will try this author again, though I won't be first in line when the next hardcover hits the bookstore. I will wait for a cheaper Kindle or paperback opportunity.