Count On Me by Ann Cavlovic

Reviewed by Wayne Ng

Ann Cavlovic’s debut novel Count On Me is about caregiving, but more pointedly, it is about family power—who gets access, who controls the narrative, and who bears the emotional cost when care becomes contested terrain. Set in Ottawa, the book follows Zoe as she cares first for her young daughter, then for her dying father, and finally for her mother, Vera, whose later years are shaped by haunting memories, isolation, manipulation, and what the book names, without euphemism, as elder abuse.

The structure is deceptively simple. Tia returns to Ottawa to help care for her father as his health declines. His death comes early, and while it is painful, it is legible: illness progresses, care intensifies, a life ends. What follows is messier, more disturbing, and ultimately the book’s emotional core. Vera survives her husband, only to become increasingly controlled by Tia’s brother Tristan and his wife, who insert themselves as gatekeepers—appointing themselves as power of attorney, limiting access, rewriting events, and gradually shutting Tia out of her mother’s life.

This is where Count On Me distinguishes itself from more familiar caregiving narratives. Cavlovic is not only documenting the labour of care— she is documenting its obstruction. The book traces the frustration, anger, and helplessness of watching a parent be isolated by family members who claim to be acting in her best interests. Elder abuse here is not sensationalized. It emerges instead through small decisions and cumulative control: who gets information, who is allowed visits, whose version of reality prevails.

Cavlovic writes plainly and with restraint. The prose is unadorned, often procedural, and that choice matters. This is a book built out of the minutiae of caregiving: phone calls, appointments, conversations that go nowhere, doors that close quietly rather than slam. The absence of melodrama sharpens the stakes. By refusing to dramatize, Cavlovic renders everyday life gritty, authentic, and harder for the reader to look away.

Tia’s relationship with her brother Tristan is one of the book’s most difficult threads. Her frustration is palpable, and while it would be easy to cast him as a villain, the real unease comes from how familiar his behaviour is. Cavlovic shows how control can be rationalized as concern, how exclusion can be framed as protection, and how family systems enable abuse without ever naming it as such. This refusal to simplify is one of the book’s strengths. It trusts the reader to sit with discomfort rather than resolve it.

The Ottawa setting grounds the book in a specific, civil servant world. Hospitals, neighbourhoods, and routines are rendered without flourish, reinforcing the sense that this story could be unfolding quietly next door. Canada’s health-care system is present but limited; it provides structure, not justice. What happens inside families—especially behind closed doors—remains largely unpoliced, leaving the reader unsettled with the knowledge that no one is immune to the slow violence of flawed systems and ordinary human avarice.

The title, Count On Me, does a lot of work. It signals reliability and duty, but it also gestures toward counting as an act of witness. Cavlovic counts losses, betrayals, moments of care, moments of failure. She counts what is said and what is withheld. In doing so, she insists that attention itself is a form of resistance.

This is not Chicken Soup For The Soul. Its strength lies in its unflinching honesty and refusal to settle for a tidy resolution. Refreshingly, there is no cathartic confrontation restoring balance. What it offers instead is validation and recognition—for anyone who has tried to care across distance, conflict, or manipulation and found that love is insufficient protection against harm.

Count On Me is ultimately about staying present when presence is contested. It asks what it means to care when access is denied, and what responsibility remains when the system—familial or institutional—fails. Cavlovic doesn’t pretend to have answers. What she provides is something rarer: a clear-eyed account of how elder abuse can unfold quietly, under the guise of care, and how devastating it can be to witness it from the margins. The reward for the patient reader is substantial.

Count On Me is published by Guernica Editions.