Still Missing

Still Missing by Chevy Stevens

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I completely *devoured* this book. I'd been waiting a really long time to read it (the library's wait list was pretty insane), and I was spellbound. I've read several books about a woman being kidnapped, but this stood out because it was the aftermath, rather than the actual act, that the book followed. I'm sure there are other books out there in the vein of trying to put a life back together that has been utterly destroyed by an abduction, but this is the first one that I've read, and I found that aspect of the novel even more heartbreaking than the beatings and rapes that Annie had to suffer (not making light of those, either). I also found it really interesting that while 'The Freak' had done so much awful stuff to Annie, I found her mother to be the bigger villain, and reading her selfishness and oblivious cruelty masked as her own pain about being in the shadow of her sibling made me angry. The Freak's psychosis was definitely interesting, but Lorraine's was far more chilling in its self-centered superficiality.



I also found the parallels between The Freak and Annie in terms of being screwed over by their mothers rather interesting and haunting, as well as the beautiful and sad parallel of Annie's relationship with her mother compared to her relationship with her dead daughter. This book told the tale that most kidnapping stories don't - that you're never really found. That person who was kidnapped and brutalized vanishes forever, and leaves behind a new person in the husk of the old, and a wide gap will constantly exist between them.



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