Book Reviews
Still Missing runs deeper than the chills it delivers, the surprises it holds and the resilience of its main character. Ms. Stevens makes Annie a strong, smart woman who won’t stop fighting to regain her sanity and equilibrium. She can’t come back until she knows why she was taken away.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
The strength of the novel lies not in its characters or insights but in a shrewdly calculated, suspenseful plot that uncorks one surprise after another.
Patrick Anderson - Washington Post
This debut novel has the power to shock and awe with its explosively frightening premise about a woman who is kidnapped by a stranger and held against her will for more than year. It starts with a very scary abduction. Annie O'Sullivan is a real-estate agent, and her captor comes for her at an open house. What happens to Annie during her captivity is heartbreaking, stomach-turning, outrageously immoral and frightening. Equally unimaginable is the catalyst for her kidnapping. This is one scary novel with a new twist on the classic kidnap and conspiracy story. Still Missing by Vancouver Island native and resident Chevy Stevens is sure to rock lovers of the thriller genre.
USA Today
Crackling with suspense this debut thriller stars Annie O'Sullivan, a young Realtor who recounts her year-long ordeal as a captive of a rapist she calls simply "The Freak." Her imprisonment, escape, and fraught reentry into ordinary life will have you glued to the page.
People
(Starred review.) Stevens’s impressive debut, a thriller set on Vancouver Island, pulsates with suspense that gets a power boost from the jaw-dropping but credible closing twist. In psychiatric sessions, Annie O’Sullivan, a 32-year-old realtor with a nice boyfriend and a demanding mother, describes her year-long ordeal as the captive of a rapist. The intense plot alternates between Annie’s creepy confinement, her escape, and her attempts to readjust to real life, from going to the bathroom when she wants to managing her own meals. Still, Annie knows that a large part of her soul is “still missing.” Her transformation from victim adds to the believability of the enthralling plot.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) On a sunny August afternoon, realtor Annie O'Sullivan is just about to end an open house showing when a friendly, nicely dressed man appears. What seems to be a lucky break is really just the beginning of Annie's yearlong ordeal. During sessions with her psychologist, Annie takes the reader back to her abduction and narrates how she struggled to survive during and after the horror. Since the reader is reliving the events through Annie's own retelling, the material can be tough to take. That emotional challenge is alleviated by Annie's flashes of humor and defiance. In her mind, once a victim does not mean one forever. Verdict: While there is physical danger in what Annie experiences, the suspense is in her psychological struggle. Author praise of this highly touted debut includes comparisons to Karin Slaughter and Lisa Gardner, and those authors' fans will like this thriller. While this may be a stretch, the "what would I do" aspect of the reading experience may make this a match for some Jodi Picoult readers as well. Highly recommended. —Jane Jorgenson, Madison P.L., WI
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Stevens’s blistering debut follows a kidnap victim from her abduction to her escape—and the even more horrifying nightmare that follows. One moment, Vancouver Island realtor Annie O’Sullivan is taking one last client, a quiet, well-spoken man with a nice smile, through the property where she’s holding an open house; the next moment, she’s being marched out to a van at gunpoint, unaware that it’s the last time for months that she’ll see the sky or breathe the open air. The man who’s taken her calls himself David; she calls him The Freak. And her ordeal over the next year, described in unsparing detail in a series of lacerating sessions with her psychiatrist, indicates that her name is a lot more accurate than his.... A grueling, gripping demonstration of melodrama’s darker side.
Kirkus Reviews