Always Watching
A Novel
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4.1 • 25 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
She helps people put their demons to rest.
But she has a few of her own…
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 desire—healing broken families is what she lives for. But Nadine doesn't 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 her—and 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 group's 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 most…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 "Gripping" (Kirkus), "Jaw-dropping" (Publishers Weekly) and "Crackling with suspense" (People magazine), ALWAYS WATCHING shows why Chevy Stevens is one of the most mesmerizing new talents of our day.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Psychiatrist Nadine Lavoie learns she can outrun her past for only so long in this powerful novel of psychological suspense from Thriller Award winner Stevens (Still Missing), her third stand-alone. For decades, the stoic Dr. Lavoie has largely managed to repress traumatic memories of the time she spent as a teen in a commune near Victoria, B.C., led by charismatic self-styled guru Aaron Quinn. Then she hears his name for the first time in years from new patient Heather Simeon, a suicidal, terrified young woman who has just left Quinn's River of Life Spiritual Center. No sooner does Lavoie start delving into Quinn's current activities in hopes of helping Heather than unsettling things start to happen to her and she also has increasingly distressing flashbacks of her commune days. Although Stevens relies too heavily on conveniently timed recovered memories to propel her twisty plot, readers will likely become as hooked as Quinn's followers. Announced first printing of 150,000.
