Never Let You Go by Chevy Stevens Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“To spend her life thinking I left her by choice. I would try harder. I would be a better wife. I would make it work. That was over a year ago. Nothing had gotten better.”- Never Let You Go, Chevy Stevens

Eleven years ago, Lindsey Nash escaped into the night with her young daughter and left an abusive relationship. Her ex-husband, Andrew, was sent to jail and Lindsey started over with a new life.

Now, Lindsey is older and wiser, with her own business and a teenage daughter who needs her more than ever. When Andrew is finally released from prison, Lindsey believes she has cut all ties and left the past behind her. But she gets the sense that someone is watching her, tracking her every move. Her new boyfriend is threatened. Her home is invaded, and her daughter is shadowed. Lindsey is convinced it's her ex-husband, even though he claims he's a different person. But has he really changed? Is the one who wants her dead closer to home than she thought?

Chevy Stevens, like Gillian Flynn and Megan Abbott, is one of those super popular thriller writers, mostly with the women's lit crowd who are too edgy for Jodi Picoult. I don't have a problem with her popularity, though I did read one of her books- Still Missing- and thought it was only okay. The twist ending felt contrived and the writing was nothing special so it didn't get much higher than a three stars from me. Never Let You Go, not to be confused with the phenomenal Never Let Me Go, only solidified my Still Missing-conceived view of her.

The main thing that did not work for me was the writing/narrative- it's hard to separate the two. Stevens is a functional writer, but not a particularly artful one. She's not necessarily what I would consider to be a bad writer- she's not SM Parker- but she's also not Tana French either. She's not even Paula Hawkins, whose style I do kind of like, or Megan Abbott who I genuinely believe is a good writer- in small doses. I could tell reading this book that she went for an emphasis of plot and characters over writing, which is fine by me- in fact, I kind of prefer it to those who favor writing over everything else, which always feels hollow and self-indulgent to me- think The Night Circus. Still, it comes across in her writing- lots of telling, little showing, buckets of exposition, etc.

I wasn't too keen on her characters, either. My biggest issue with the abusive relationship depicted was that it came across as if Stevens' extent of knowledge of abusive relationships amounted to the Wikipedia article on it. Of course, I don't know her so I'm not implying anything, and it is true that a lot of Andrew's actions were textbook abusive behaviors, but there was something about it that felt hollow and unrealistic. 

Thought that may just be because I couldn't really connect to any of the characters. I guess I liked Lindsey and Sophie okay, but they felt... fluid, like their personalities, likes, dislikes, and interests would change at the author's whim. All the characters felt like that, and that's not really my favorite means of telling a story. But again, I couldn't hate anyone, because they weren't given any traits that I instantly despise. Lindsey is not a martyr mom, Sophie is not an obnoxious teenager, and they both had problems that felt real to some extent, like the mom disapproving of her daughter's boyfriend by projecting on him.

So the thing Stevens has really going for her is her plots. And I admit, she comes up with some really great ones even if she does come across as being a Gillian Flynn-lite writer. The idea behind Still Missing hooked me in to it, and, while this book didn't interest me nearly as much, I still wondered where she would go with it. I wasn't crazy about the twist and thought it was slow-moving, but I think Stevens wanted to take risks and I have to respect that.

I don't think I'll be reading much more from Chevy Stevens, but you never know. She's the kind of writer you read when you don't want to think, and with the week I've had that works. This book was perfectly mediocre.

7 out of 10