Never Knowing

Book 1 of my 2016 Reading Challenge

read from January 1 - 2

Never Knowing by Chevy Stevens

Summary (via Goodreads)

At thirty-three Sara Gallagher is finally happy. Her antique furniture restoration business is taking off and she’s engaged to a wonderful man. But there’s one big question that still haunts her — who are her birth parents? Sara is finally ready to find out. 
Sara’s birth mother rejects her—again. Then she discovers her biological father is an infamous killer who’s been hunting women every summer for almost forty years. Sara tries to come to terms with her horrifying parentage — and her fears that she’s inherited more than his looks — with her therapist, Nadine, who we first met in "Still Missing." But soon Sara realizes the only thing worse than finding out your father is a killer is him finding out about you. 
Some questions are better left unanswered. 
Never Knowing  is a complex and compelling portrayal of one woman’s quest to understand where she comes from. That is, if she can survive…

My Opinion

As always, it was compulsively readable.  I seem to read Chevy Stevens over Christmas break every year and it's because I know that once I start the book I will want to read the whole thing with no interruptions regardless of the time.  This one was no exception: I got into bed last night around midnight with the idea that I'd read until falling asleep and was completing the book with bleary eyes around 2:30.

As for the mystery itself, meh.  Maybe it's because once you've read her you have an idea what her twists will be, or maybe it was the story itself, but I predicted fairly early on who the traitor in her life was.  There were also many things left unanswered or not fully explained for me.

Building suspense is the author's specialty and I'm sure next year at this time I will be writing another post about binge reading another book of hers.  If you've never read her before, my favorite of hers will always be Still Missing. (side note: my review for Still Missing was my very first blog review, back in 2013).

A Few Quotes from the Book

"I read the [Original Birth Registration] over and over, looking for answers, but I just kept hearing one question: Why did you give me away?"

"We had this beautiful bright-colored rope rug we'd brought back from a trip to Saltspring Island, and [the dog] must've started nibbling one corner, and then just kept pulling and pulling. By the time we got home the rug was destroyed. My life is like that beautiful colored rug - it took years to sew it together. Now I'm afraid if I keep pulling on this one corner it's all going to unravel.

 But I'm not sure I can stop."

"It's like thinking you were handed the wrong life and you just had to get to the right one and everything would be okay, then finding out that there isn't a right one."