Just Jennifer

Still Missing by Chevy Stevens (St. Martin’s, July 6, 2010)

Told through a series of sessions with a therapist, relating current events with flashbacks, Annie O’Sullivan begins to return to some modicum of normalcy after having been kidnapped and held hostage in a rural cabin on Vancouver Island for almost a year. The year of emotional and physical abuse Annie endured is heart-wrenching enough, but her attempts to return to her old life, and what she learns as the investigation of her abduction progresses, only heighten these feelings and bring the terror more into focus. Parts of the novel are graphic, but the underlying psychological damage that is occurring is even more horrifying. Chevy Stevens deftly captures the pure terror Annie feels while in captivy and distinguishes it from the new terror Annie feels when she returns home. This is an exceptional debut.