I purchased this book on Amazon.
Publication Date: April 1, 2012
It happened like this. I was stolen from an airport. Taken from everything I knew, everything I was used to. Taken to sand and heat, dirt and danger. And he expected me to love him. This is my story. A letter from nowhere.
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 …but is this real love, or Stockholm Syndrome?
My Thoughts:
I really, really did not think I would like a book in which the romance is between kidnapper and victim. Imagine my surprise when I actually found myself rooting for these two to find a way to make it work!
This book is a psychological thriller that you will devour as quickly as possible. It's a tense read and at times, especially in the beginning, I found it almost difficult to read, but in the best possible way. Gemma's abduction at the airport had me anxiously reading as fast as possible out of worry for her.
My only complaint about this book is that I liked the kidnapper better than the victim! Later on in the book I found myself identifying more with Gemma, but in the beginning she struck me as pretty distant and I didn't have the easiest time relating to her.
In contrast, I was kind of disgusted with myself for falling for Ty! I mean, yes, of course he was wrong to kidnap Gemma, and it completely freaks me out how thoroughly he planned the whole event, and when you add in the years of stalking combined with the age gap their relationship is basically a series of one red flag after another.
HOWEVER. Once the two of them get to Australia and we get a little insight into Ty's character, I couldn't help but feel for the broken little boy who grew up to be this kind of man. Ty did a terrible thing, but he's not a terrible person, and you kind of can't help but want a happy ending for him. I think most readers will be hard-pressed to hate Ty after the sacrifice he ends up making for Gemma toward the end of the book.
I have seen some people already hoping for a sequel, and I have to say I really don't think that would turn out the way people are hoping it would. I can't really say more without spoiling the book for people who haven't read it yet, but email me if you agree and we can discuss it there!
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