Still Missing
I don't know how other authors do it -- reading for pleasure while while they are writing. I try, but I struggle, and I definitely don't enjoy what I'm reading as much as I would like. I think it's because I'm distracted. While I am crafting a story, I am so consumed with the characters and the plot, that there isn't room in my head for someone else's story. It must be my inability to multi-task showing itself yet again.
But because I am currently between writing projects and have sworn to stay that way for the rest of the summer, my mind is empty. (No wisecracks, please.) So I couldn't race to my stack of 'to-be-read' books fast enough, and the one on the top of the pile was Still Missing by Chevy Stevens. I met Chevy (a penname; her actual name is Renee) at the BC Bookfair Breakfast last February. We were both presenting upcoming books along with Adam Lewis Shroeder and Susan Juby. Because this was a promotional event, there were free copies floating around, and being addicted to books, I helped myself.
Still Missing is Chevy Stevens' first novel, but it is certainly not going to be her last. In fact, her second novel, Never Knowing is scheduled for release in 2011. This young lady better buckle her seatbelt, because her career as a writer is about to skyrocket.
Though Still Missing didn't actually hit bookstands until this month, advance reviews have been stellar. In this suspense thriller, Chevy tells the story of Annie O'Sullivan, a young realtor in a small Vancouver Island town, who is abducted and held captive for a year by a deranged man she refers to as The Freak. The story is told in hindsight through Annie's sessions with her 'shrink', but knowing Annie survived the ordeal in no way detracts from the intensity of the story. I was horrified and dumbfounded by the atrocities she was forced to endure while in captivity and amazed at her resourcefulness, tenacity, and mental strength.
Chevy says that her purpose in writing this novel was to explore the aftermath of an abduction. Even when Annie physically returned to her 'pre-abduction' life, her ordeal was not over. She was no longer who she had been. Her experiences had changed her, and her absence had changed the people who had been in her previous life. Annie was, in fact, still missing.
This is a fabulous book. Read it. You'll be glad you did.