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A review by laurenmichellebrock
Still Missing by Chevy Stevens
2.0
Still Missing is the story of a thirty-year old real estate agent who is abducted during an open house. Over the course of the book, Annie O'Sullivan talks in monologues to her shrink about her year with The Freak and how she's getting along in the real world in the aftermath of her abduction.
When I first picked up this book, I had high hopes for the storyline. From the very first paragraph, however, I felt like this wasn't going to be the kind of story I bargained for. I often felt like the author was too distanced from her character, because I didn't find Annie's character very believable. While I understand that Stevens has never been abducted and couldn't possibly know what that's like first hand, I also feel like she didn't try hard enough to put herself in Annie's shoes to see what that really could've been like.
While the story itself is very depressing if you were to simply tell someone about it, the tone of the book wasn't...dark enough for me. Stevens used a lot of cliched phrases, which killed the tone of a scene. I think this book was too focused on plot and didn't have enough balance between character development, style, and storyline. When it got to the end, I felt like this whole book would've been much better as a characteristically dramatic episode of Without A Trace.
As a book, the ending didn't work for me. It felt like Stevens was trying to build up the ending so much that, in the end, it just rode out kind of flat. I would've been much happier with the book if it was a simple story about a woman trying to deal with life after being abducted - more character development and focus on style, and less plot.
When I first picked up this book, I had high hopes for the storyline. From the very first paragraph, however, I felt like this wasn't going to be the kind of story I bargained for. I often felt like the author was too distanced from her character, because I didn't find Annie's character very believable. While I understand that Stevens has never been abducted and couldn't possibly know what that's like first hand, I also feel like she didn't try hard enough to put herself in Annie's shoes to see what that really could've been like.
While the story itself is very depressing if you were to simply tell someone about it, the tone of the book wasn't...dark enough for me. Stevens used a lot of cliched phrases, which killed the tone of a scene. I think this book was too focused on plot and didn't have enough balance between character development, style, and storyline. When it got to the end, I felt like this whole book would've been much better as a characteristically dramatic episode of Without A Trace.
As a book, the ending didn't work for me. It felt like Stevens was trying to build up the ending so much that, in the end, it just rode out kind of flat. I would've been much happier with the book if it was a simple story about a woman trying to deal with life after being abducted - more character development and focus on style, and less plot.