Stolen
By Lucy Christopher
3 stars
I had such high expectations for this book when I started reading it, Stolen is a novel everyone was talking about a few years back and as always I am late to the party. After reading this book I can see why people 6 years ago where obsessed with this story and maybe teenage me would have loved it, but unfortunately for me this book was just okay.
In Stolen, sixteen-year-old Gemma is kidnapped from Bangkok airport and taken to the Australian Outback. The story takes the form of a letter, written by Gemma to her captor, reflecting on those strange and disturbing months in the outback. Months when the lines between love and obsession, and love and dependency, blur until they don't exist—almost.
My favorite part about the book was the writing, I find it so eerie that it is written in second person it just gives it a suspenseful tone. I love the descriptions of the Australian setting, the author really turned the Australian dessert into a character of its own. Overall, the writing style was fantastic and I will for sure read other works by this author because honestly the prose was outstanding.
Even though I loved the prose, the story in general was hard for me to get through. First of all, I could not for the life of me get over the fact that the kidnapping scene is almost impossible, there is no way you can get away with taking someone from an airport, I’m sorry but no. Then we have the problem of pacing, the story starts very fast and because it is such a short book before you even realize, the story is coming to an end. I had such a hard time believing that the character where able to change so much in such a short period of time.
Then, talking about the characters, we first have Gemma, she was a pretty okay character for me. Honestly she was nothing special, I kept trying to figure out what made her so special that Ty would go through all that trouble just to have her. We then have Ty, who honestly felt very real to me, as a Criminal Minds fan I could understand why Ty did the things he did, the author did a great job in describing a textbook psychopath. The secondary characters are dull and don’t add much to the story, I couldn’t tell you the name of a secondary character to save my life.
Overall, I am sad I wasn’t able to enjoy this book as much as the majority of people seem to have. I understand where the hype comes from, like I said the writing style and the characters are great, but it simply wasn’t for me. I liked the concept, I liked the characters but I just could suspend my disbelief that much in order for this to make sense to me.
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