Stolen (a book review)

Psychoanalyze if you will, but I have been wanting to read this abduction book for a long while. It came out in 2010 in North America and I'm pretty sure I've had it on my to-read list since then. I even got pretty close a couple months ago in a book store when I illicitly read the first twenty pages sitting on the uncomfortable carpeted floor. It wasn't until I walked into teen section of the library after finally getting a library card yesterday that I got to take it home. It was all mine. Three years later.

The plot of the book is pretty simple. There are two characters: Gemma and Ty. It's written from Gemma's perspective as a letter to Ty, who kidnaps her in the Bangkok airport and takes her to middle-of-nowhere Australia.

I don't know what I was expecting. It's a kidnapping story, complete with a drink being drugged and a girl being put in a trunk. About a hundred pages in, I was half ready to stop reading, both totally creeped out by Ty but also invested in knowing where it was going. I kept reading.

I was worried it was going to be some twisted version of Beauty and the Beast where the victim falls in love with her captor. But it wasn't. Ty kept talking about how he was "saving her" from her life because he loved her and, though she started to trust him at the end (or, at least, trust that he wasn't going to kill her), she never really believed him.

I kept thinking about how I would react to the same situation. Would I be as feisty and venomous as Gemma? I feel like I wouldn't take on the same generally loathing tactic. I think I would take a more amenable, reasoning approach. She made a lot of biting remarks to him and I get that he kidnapped her and she hated him but he was also her only way out of the desert. She didn't really try to talk him down. Having said that, he was seemingly mentally unwell and I think Gemma did considerably well with her coping mechanisms and escape attempts.

The writing was excellent. I believed Gemma. She was real and strong and she didn't give up. She told the story from a place of confusion--she didn't really know how she felt about Ty--but that was represented and she felt reliable. And I was confused, too. Obviously, I realize that kidnapping is bad but by the end I was sympathetic to Ty. He really wasn't a terrible person. Crazy yes, but not evil. Ty was a fascinating character, if a little incomprehensible. I can't say I ever really liked him, but I felt really sorry for him. I was also afraid of him.

In addition to the beautifully handled character dyamics, the setting was exquisite. Lucy Christopher paints the desert with such life and vitality that you can see why Ty loves it so much.

It was worth the wait. Maybe a little bit slow for a psychological thriller novel but if you take away the thriller part, it's does an exceptional job. It's provocative and raw and if you're in the mood for an emotional rollercoaster that takes place outside of your own life, I recommend Stolen.

*As a friend said last night, "If I was lonely, I would get a dog, not kidnap a girlfriend."