Dr. Nadine Lavoie is a psychiatrist totally involved in helping others heal from the various miseries in their lives. A young woman is brought into the hospital she's affiliated with one night from a suicide attempt. In trying to help this young woman, she's stunned to discover that her own past has somehow landed at her doorstep.
At least she thinks it has because there are large portions of her childhood that she simply cannot remember. When she was a child, her mother had taken her and her brother to stay with a small group of people who were living in a commune. Something terrible happened there that left Nadine with severe claustrophobia and no memory of what the event was. Now, Nadine is determined to ferret out whatever trauma her childhood may hold. However, there's someone who will keep her from remembering no matter what it takes.
Chevy Stevens has done it again with ALWAYS WATCHING! Her first two books in which Nadine's character plays a small, but pivotal role, were page turners of the most serious kind. Now, Ms. Stevens treats us to a complete book built around Nadine, and it is, indeed, a treat.
The sign of a great writer is when that writer can take words and craft them into stories that are compelling to the point that you're simply held in thrall by them. Chevy Stevens has that gift. She builds her stories and relates them in such a way that there's no putting down that book until you've found the answers to all of the mysteries. Yes, you can probably tell that I'm a huge fan of this woman's writing.
ALWAYS WATCHING takes a delicate and distasteful topic and shows the truth about it. She doesn't pull you into a happy and joyful fantasyland. Rather, she shows the real world in her stories. That doesn't mean it is all doom and gloom, though. Ms. Stevens seems to also believe that there's a redeeming quality to just about everyone. So while she unmasks the many faces of evil and exposes them for what they are she also offers hope that there are ways of fighting that evil and winning.
For readers that have devoured the first two books by Chevy Stevens, ALWAYS WATCHING is a must read. Although this one can stand on its own, if you haven't discovered this talented writer yet, you may want to have all three of these on hand to read in order.
She helps people put their demons to rest.
But she has a few of her ownβ¦
In the lockdown ward of a psychiatric hospital, Dr. Nadine
Lavoie is in her element. She has the tools to help people,
and she has the desireβhealing broken families is what she
lives for. But Nadine doesnβt want to look too closely at
her own past because there are whole chunks of her life that
are black holes. It takes all her willpower to tamp down her
recurrent claustrophobia, and her daughter, Lisa, is a
runaway who has been on the streets for seven years.
When a distraught woman, Heather Simeon, is brought into the
Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit after a suicide attempt,
Nadine gently coaxes her story out of herβand learns of some
troubling parallels with her own life. Digging deeper,
Nadine is forced to confront her traumatic childhood, and
the damage that began when she and her brother were brought
by their mother to a remote commune on Vancouver Island.
What happened to Nadine? Why was their family destroyed?
And why does the name Aaron Quinn, the groupβs leader, bring
complex feelings of terror to Nadine even today?
And then, the unthinkable happens, and Nadine realizes that
danger is closer to home than she ever imagined. She has no
choice but to face what terrifies her the mostβ¦and fight
back.
Sometimes you can leave the past, but you can never escape.
Told with the trademark powerful storytelling that has had
critics praising her work as βGrippingβ (Kirkus), βJaw-
droppingβ (Publishers Weekly) and βCrackling with suspenseβ
(People magazine), ALWAYS WATCHING shows why Chevy Stevens
is one of the most mesmerizing new talents of our day.
No excerpt available.
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