Just Jennifer

Always Watching by Chevy Stevens (St. Martin’s Press, June 2013)

Dr. Nadine Lavoie helped Annie O’Sullivan after she was kidnapped, raped and tortured (in Still Missing); she guided Sara Gallagher as she came to terms with the fact that her biological father was a serial killer who had hunted women for more than thirty years and might be coming after Sara (in Never Knowing).  Now, Nadine has to face the demons of not only her past, but her present, as she attends to Heather, a young woman who has attempted suicide several times, and has found herself in the Vancouver hospital where Nadine now practices.  Heather and her husband Daniel mention that once they left the commune they were living in after Heather miscarried, Heather started on a downward slide.  Nadine realizes that the community in which Daniel and Heather were living had its roots in a commune Nadine lived in as a pre-teenager with her mother and older brother, one of which Nadine has few memories, but suspects may have contributed to her claustrophobia and feelings of terror each time she hears the name Aaron Quinn.  Nadine begins searching not only for answers for Heather, but for herself, hoping to finally heal her demons.  At the same time, Nadine, a recent widow, is searching the streets of Vancouver for her daughter Lisa who is fighting demons of her own, including a drug problem, some of which Nadine is not even aware of.  Coming to terms with your past is hard enough, but when Nadine realizes the mistakes she made that are costing her present with Lisa, she becomes even more determined to learn what happened at the camp and stop the members from ever doing these things again.  A tightly written novel, Chevy Stevens explores the story behind Dr. Nadine Lavoie and shifts it to the fore front bringing to it the same suspense she captured telling the stories of Nadine’s patients.