Stolen

Stolen
by Lucy Christopher

This is a young adult, fictional story, not a romance, yet not a horror story. A Sixteen year old girl, Gemma, is kidnapped and taken away to the vast and remote outback of Australia. Her kidnapper , Ty, believes he is deeply in love with Gemma and is "rescuing" her from her big city dwelling, indifferent parents, selfish friends as well as a materialistic life in London. The story is told in the first person and reads as an honest, realistic letter to her kidnapper. The personality development of both main characters is intriguing and the reading is continually guessing as to whether Ty is just an eccentric, slightly delusional person or someone more sinister, extremely mentally ill. As Gemma reluctantly gets to know Ty, her emotions run the gamut until she begins to empathize with her kidnapper and have romantic feelings toward him. Naturally, these feelings brings up the psychological phenomenon, "Stockholm Syndrome", in which a hostage grows adulation and positive feelings toward his or her captor. After I finished this novel, I read up on the author, Lucy Christopher. This was her first book, and I was very surprised that she actually wrote this book as part of her doctoral thesis. The author is from Wales and resided in Australia for most of her life. Therefore, Ms. Christopher brought vivid, mind capturing detail to the story allowing the reader to be pulled in and to have a clear picture of the outback without having ever being there. Stolen was intriguing, and as I had hoped, the story is not be overly dark and depressing. Surprisingly, there is no rape and very little physical violence, so if you are a reader who is sensitive to these themes, it is still a book I would recommend. I have been not so patiently waiting for this story to be published for quite a few months. I read it quickly and was not disappointed. Ms. Christopher is definitely a unique author to the Young Adult genre. -- recommended by Jessica H. - Walt Branch Library


[ official Stolen and Lucy Christopher web site ]

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