Review: Stolen by Lucy Christopher

Title: Stolen

By Lucy Christopher

Publishers: Chicken House (Imprint of Scholastic Books)

BookWhisperer Rating:  Five Stars

Book Description:

Told in a letter to her captor by 16-year-old Gemma, Stolen explores the influence that a really wild and remote space can have on the inner development of a young woman.

Gemma, a British city-living teenager, is kidnapped while on holiday with her parents. Her kidnapper, Ty, takes her to the wild land of outback Australia. To Gemma’s city-eyes, the landscape is harsh and unforgiving and there are no other signs of human life for hundreds of kilometres in every direction. Here, there is no escape. Gemma must learn to deal with her predicament, or die trying to fight it.

Ty, a young man, has other ideas for her. His childhood experience of living in outback Australia has forever changed the way he sees things. But he too has been living in the city; Gemma’s city. Unlike Gemma, however, he has had enough. In outback Australia he sees an opportunity for a new kind of life; a life more connected to the earth. He has been watching and learning about Gemma for many years; when he kidnaps her, his plan finally begins to take shape.

But Ty is not a stereotypical kidnapper and, over time, Gemma comes to see Ty in a new light, a light in which he is something more sensitive. The mysteries of Ty, and the mystery of her new life, start to take hold. She begins to feel something for her kidnapper when he wakes screaming in the night. Over the time spent with her captor, Gemma’s appreciation of him develops into what could be referred to as Stockholm syndrome.

Stolen is a incredible story of a young girls courage to survive.The main character is that of Gemma, she is a sixteen year old that is kidnapped/stolen. Her capture kidnaps her from a Bangkok airport, and whisks her away to a home he has created in the middle of the desert.  Shortly, after the abduction of Gemma we begin to find that this was no a chance kidnapping. Ty had been stalking the victim for several years prior to her abduction. As I was reading this novel I couldn't help but compliment the detailed and planned abducting; had this book not ended in the turn of events that it had I could see the couple having never been found. With miles and miles of desert; escape was no longer a concern a person would be dead long before making headway toward civilization. The entire story was written a letter that the victim is writing to her abductor after the fact. I found this to be a very creative way to write, and a thrilling experience for the reader. As the tables begin to turn; even the reader will have a hard time not sympathizing with Ty. He is a very troubled person that has had a very traumatizing past. I believe that this would be a very good book for discussion; this is ultimately a very controversial book that readers would not likely see eye to eye. Upon completing this novel, I can without a doubt say that Ty truely loved his victim, and he sacrificing himself for her safety can not be misunderstood as anything else. I am tremendously impressed by Lucy Christopher and will be adding more of her books to my To Be Read pile. The cover of Stolen was a very plain and simple look. There is not a whole lot that one can say about it.