Those Girls

Those Girls is a tough read. Ms. Stevens pulls no punches when describing what the girls experience at the hands of their father and later at the hands of the two boys who “help” them. It is enough to make even the least-sensitive reader wince in sympathy. However, without such detail, the book would not be half as powerful as it is. What Ms. Stevens does best in all of her novels, and especially with her latest, is to show the darkest aspects of humanity and the resilience women have when experiencing such darkness. One cannot do that without the meticulous imagery that shows the girls’ journey, no matter how difficult it is to read those scenes.

Another element of Those Girls which is so powerful is the emotional connection show more readers will have for each of the girls. Each girl is so very different, handling their individual and collective traumas in different manners, but readers will connect with them all as they seek to make a life for themselves and put the past as far behind them as possible. In many ways, readers are right next to the girls, experiencing what they experience at all times. Their fear is the readers’ fear. Their anger is the readers’ anger. The emotions at play throughout the novel are impossible to ignore, and readers will feel them all.

Those Girls is an intense and surprisingly personal novel. Readers will find themselves emotionally invested in the story and audibly voicing their fears and concerns to the room at large while reading. Not only that, but it holds up a mirror in front of each reader, forcing them to reflect on their own survival instincts and determination to right a wrong. For it is as much a novel of survival as it is revenge as the girls struggle with the past’s impact on the next generation. Ms. Stevens’ novels are always thrilling and edge-of-your-seat suspenseful. Given the power of the emotions and the no-holds-barred scenes of violence, Those Girls ups the ante in thrillers and makes it a must-read for the summer. show less

Those Girls by Chevy Stevens is a very highly recommended novel about three sisters trying to escape and survive in a world set against them. Great novel, perfect stay-up-all-night-at-the-airport book (but be by a security guard station),an accomplished thriller that held my rapt attention from beginning to end!

It's the summer of 1997 and those girls are the Campbell sisters who live in a run-down house on a ranch in Western Canada by the Alberta/British Columbia border. Jess (just turning 15), Courtney (16 1/2) and Dani (almost 18) have had a hard life for years. After their mother died, they were foster care for a while because their father was unemployed and drinking heavily. Then their father regained custody, promising to stay show more sober. Now he's off working in the Alberta oil fields for three weeks at a time, only coming back, maybe, for one week out of the month to see how the girls are and, sometimes, buy groceries. The girls help out with work on the ranch to help pay the rent. The trouble is their father is drinking again, and when he drinks he is abusive.

When he comes back drunk for the final night, he has heard some rumors around town about Courtney. To punish her, he burns Courtney with a hot pan and then tries to drown her in a toilet. Dani and Jess are watching and trying to stop him. Dani gets the shot gun out, but Jess is the one who uses it to save Courtney's life. Now the girls are on the run, headed to Vancouver, where they are sure they can blend into the city and make a new life for themselves.

Along the way their truck breaks down near the small town of Cash Creek. When two brothers, Brian and Gaven Luxton, stop and offer to help, all three of the girls sense that something isn't right, but they are desperate. The brothers tell them that they can work on the ranch to earn the money to pay for the repairs needed on their truck. Feeling trapped and hoping they are just being alarmists, they decide to trust the brothers. And then things get really bad....

The sisters do finally make it to Vancouver with the help of a few good men, where they change their names (to Jamie, Crystal, and Dallas Caldwell) and make a life for themselves. But the past is not quite through with them yet and now they have even more to lose. They have all done an excellent job avoiding sharing information about their past and trying to get on with their lives, but the truth is always with them, and there are events that will always haunt them.

As I was reading Those Girls I had two quotes running through my head: "Women have got to make the world safe for men since men have made it so darned unsafe for women." (Nancy Astor) and "A girl child ain't safe in a family of mens..." (Sofia from The Color Purple by Alice Walker). Most women will understand that, even today, the world is not safe for women in so many ways.

The novel is divided into three parts. The first part of the story opens in July 1997 and is narrated by Jess. The second part jumps ahead to July 2015 and is narrated by a new character. The third part is narrated by Jess/Jamie, with an epilogue by Dani/Dallas.

I was absolutely, totally engaged with Those Girls from beginning to end. The writing is superb, the story is fast-paced and emotional, and the suspense is taut and nerve wracking. Chevy Stevens has done it again. This is a book that should be on everyone's list as a best book of the summer. Look for it's release on July 7th. (Although men may not quite respond to it as much as women - that whole unsafe reality women have to deal with while even walking to their cars at the grocery store.)

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of St. Martin's Press for review purposes. show less

"What else bad can happen?"

(Full disclosure: I received a free electronic ARC for review through NetGalley. Trigger warning for rape, torture, child abuse, and general violence.)

To say that life hasn't been easy for the Campbell sisters is an understatement of epic proportions. When they were younger, their mother - who loved them dearly but wasn't always able to put enough food on the table - was killed, hit head-on by a hay truck. Their already unstable father went off the rails and on a bender, effectively abandoning them to the state. The three were swiftly separated, placed into different foster homes, each one worse than the next. (Courtney's foster dad sexually harassed her, and his jealous wife beat her in retaliation; Dani show more effectively became a slave laborer.)

After Dad got his shit together, Dani, Courtney, and Jess went to live with him on a remote ranch near the Canadian border. There, the girls help work off their rent by performing manual labor - all while trying their best to avoid Dad's fists. He's a violent drunk, and without Mom around to mediate, the abuse has only escalated. Luckily, he's gone three weeks out of every month, working on an oil field in Alberta.

One night he returns from camp, drunk and in a mood. A friend informed him that his middle daughter Courtney is "running around" with a married man nearly twice her age. He confronts her, and before you can say "slut shaming" or "victim blaming," things go sideways.

With the police and nosy neighbors sniffing around, the girls decide to go on the run. Naturally, their escape vehicle breaks down, stranding them in the middle of nowhere. With few options, they accept help from a couple of sketchy older guys. A bunch of horrible stuff happens and, after five days in hell, the girls manage to escape. With the help of a pair of ex-cons - rehabilitated and keen on paying it forward - the sisters make it into Vancouver, where they assume new identities and try to get on with their lives.

Fast-forward seventeen years. Courtney - who's had the most trouble coming to terms with what happened - suddenly disappears, forcing Jess and Dani to revisit the horrors they faced in Cold Creek.

Confession time: I waffled on this one for weeks before requesting a copy on NetGalley. On the one hand: rape like whoah. On the other: a solid Goodreads rating, and I do enjoy a good rape revenge story - if it's done right (see, e.g., Stephen King's Big Driver). I finally decided to go for it, thinking that I could skip through the rape scenes - or abandon the story altogether - if needed.

While the rape scenes aren't needlessly graphic - Stevens often cuts away as one or more girls is led out of the room, resuming the narration minutes or hours later, when she's returned to her sisters, bruised and bloodied - at the end of the day the whole thing still feels a little icky and exploitative. This is due in no small part to the story's climax, which is largely lacking in emotional catharsis.

I'd really hoped - and half expected - the "girls" (now women) to go on a Kill Bill -style Roaring Rampage of Revenge; doubly so when it's revealed that the ex-con who takes them in and ultimately adopts them as family is a) a boxer b) who owns his own gym c) catered to troubled teens and d) teaches them self-defense. (Dani even goes on to become a trainer herself.) Alas, the ending isn't nearly as satisfying as we - and the sisters - deserve. A little more believable, maybe, but let's face it: no one's reading this novel for the realism. As Jem and The Holograms might say, it's truly outrageous. Truly, truly, truly outrageous.

Even so, Those Girls is a weirdly compulsive read. I polished 90% of it off in one afternoon and evening - hours faster than the estimated reading time provided by my Kindle, which is unheard of. (I tend to putter.) Stevens has got the thriller thing down: the action, the pacing, the suspense, the character development even - it's all aces.

A little more pushback on the rape culture stuff (the girls blame themselves in various ways for their victimization; while this is indeed realistic, a counter-voice would be nice) and a more satisfying ending, and this might be a 4-star dealio.

http://www.easyvegan.info/2015/07/08/those-girls-by-chevy-stevens/ show less

this was *way* too graphic for my liking. there didn't seem to be any reason for the sexual assaults to be in such detail, and so many times. it also stretched believability by the end, as far as that storyline goes, but my main issue is the voyeuristic nature of what happened to these girls, in the telling of it. so it seemed like this could be good but mostly it was just full of ick, for no reason.

Those Girls by Chevy Stevens is a powerful, emotionally wrenching, gut punching novel of pain and tragedy that once in its grips, you will not escape unscathed.

"...Remember when Dad used to buy us Caramilk bars every Christmas?' Courtney's voice was small, the memory big.
I chewed slower now, my eyes filling with tears. It had been years since Dad had brought us chocolate bars, not since our mom had died.
It had only been three days since I'd killed him..."

(Spoilers ahead!!)

Dani, Courtney, and Jess are three young sisters on the run. Dani the oldest at seventeen and Jess the youngest at fifthteen, had lost their mother a few years past and were living with their father. A drunk and abusive man who had never gotten over the death of his show more wife and had no idea how to raise his growing his girls. After the mother had died, the girl's father abandoned them for a time and they had been separated in foster homes. Only now they were reunited and were willing to put up with anything to stay together. So they took the drunken beatings until one night, as he tried to burn Courtney's face they had had enough and then he was laying on the floor in the bathroom, dead from a bullet wound.

The girls knew, even if they could prove it was self-defense, they would be separated and sent to foster families and one of them would certainly go to prison. They bury their father's body and set out. But the beat up old truck wouldn't get them very far and they end up broken down on the road outside of the town of Cash Creek.. Two young men, Brian and Gavin come upon them and offer to help fix their truck and give them a place to sleep and work. But Brian and Gavin aren't the good young men they pretend to be and the teenage girls find themselves trapped and locked in an abandoned warehouse. Here, Brian and Gavin beat and sadistically rape the sisters over the course of days. Until one day the girls escape and with help, flee.

Seventeen years pass and the girls have grown, Dani is now Dallas, Courtney has become Crystal and Jess has become Jamie. They have put behind them what happened in Cash Creek. But some nightmares never end and after another bad drunken night with a violent man, Crystal breaks down. She knows the only way she can finish this is to return to Cash Creek and make Brian and Gavin pay for what they did. Dallas and Jamie know they have to follow Crystal and save her from herself and the past, and in doing so, save Jamie's teenage daughter Skylar from the horror of Cash Creek. From all the truths of Cash Creek.

Those Girls is brutal. It has all the subtlety of a seventies B movie. Blood and violence, vicious and sadistic rapes, and murder. The girls are torn apart by the events that shape their early lives and while it would be a happy ending to say it all turns out well, it just isn't what this story was going to be.

Simply put, I really didn't enjoy Those Girls.

But I'm not sure I was meant to. It was a tale of violence against women and the storybook ending of all turning into rainbows and butterflies isn't realistic. The pain of those events do not just haunt the girls but all around them.

It is potent storytelling. Powerfully crafted with little room for the reader to breathe a sigh of hope and relief. Those Girls will do what few books are capable of doing. It stays with you. You will live with Dani, Courtney and Jess long after the last page is turned.

A very good and disturbing read. show less

Jess, Dani, and Courtney live in a neglected house with their abusive and drunken father. One night, after a particularly bad fight, the girls have to flee town quickly -- only to see things go from bad to worse as their truck breaks down during their journey. Eventually, the story picks up 18 years later (with the girls living under new names), when a turn of events threatens to tear down the lives they've managed to somewhat re-build.

This book was rather bizarre, I have to say. First of all, do not read this if you are triggered by scenes of brutal abuse or rape. Just don't. Terrible things happen in this book. It was almost mind-numbing to read - almost too much.

I'm still not sure how I feel about this one. The sisters drove me a show more bit crazy. It seemed like one bad decision after another with them. I know they are young when they initially leave home, and abused, but seriously? Then it just seems like the book was a series of misfortunes after another. I feel like Stevens could have limited it at some point. However, it was all oddly compelling, and I found myself reading the whole thing rather compulsively, even if I was constantly disappointed and disheartened by each turn of events.

(Note: I received a copy of this book via Netgalley in return for an unbiased review.) show less

So the last book I read by Chevy Stevens, That Night, annoyed me. I didn't like it; I thought the main character was a moron. However, this book was Stevens' redemption. It is about three sisters who survive some pretty dark and horrendous stuff - I was horrified, sad, and scared while reading. I couldn't put it down. I have a baby at home, and sleep is currently a valuable commodity to me - but I gave up some of that precious, precious slumber to read this book until the wee hours. I thought this book was well written, riveting, and although the end felt a little hurried, I really really enjoyed it. I was worn out emotionally from reading it!